I, Ben, recently sent out an email with a BIG error in the subject line, which started “Última día!”
Boy did I get some quick feedback on that! For example:
“Dear Ben and Marina,
You’ve really blown your credentials with the first word of this message.
Día, although ending in an ‘a’, is a masculine noun, so you should have written ‘Último‘. Alternatively, you could have written ‘Última hora!’ since hora is feminine.”
Yes, quite right, I should have written “último día” – it’s a humiliating mistake, but that’s what happens if I write emails at 7a.m. without getting Marina to check the Spanish (which she usually always does, don’t worry!)
So, I blew my credentials a little bit (but not Marina’s!), but there is a plus side to all this…
It’s OK to get caught out making mistakes in Spanish, as you learn MORE and never make the same mistake again!
You can be sure I’ll never make that one again! In my defence, ‘día’ is one of those tricky words that looks feminine (because of the ‘a’ on the end) but is actually masculine.
Others include:
El sofá
El tema
El clima
or the other way round…
La mano
It’s totally unfair of these words to trick us like this!
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