# The spelling of contralto/mezzo/soprano



## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

why is it that, in English, it is the _female_ voice types which are spelled sopran*o*, mezz*o* sopran*o*, contralt*o*? wouldn't sopran*a*, mezz*a* sopran*a*, etc make more sense?


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Why? There are no specific endings for words of different genders in English.

N.


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## graziesignore (Mar 13, 2015)

Doesn't the adjective describe the word "voice"? Is the word "voice" a masculine noun in Italian?


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Actually, in Italian, soprano is a masculine term, even when it's designing the more high-pitched voice of a female. 

So, when referring for instance to Maria Callas as the owner of an 'absolute' voice of soprano, the correct term in Italian should be 'il soprano assoluto (or il soprano sfogato), Maria Callas".

Same for mezzo and alto.

"Voice" is "voce" and it's feminine.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

graziesignore said:


> Doesn't the adjective describe the word "voice"? Is the word "voice" a masculine noun in Italian?


voice types are nouns. "I am a coloratura soprano" "I am a lyric baritone" "I am a dramatic mezzo", etc


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> voice types are nouns. "I am a coloratura soprano" "I am a lyric baritone" "I am a dramatic mezzo", etc


Aren't those adjectives or adjectival phrases, and the (omitted) noun is 'singer'? That's what I always assumed, I don't know if it's right.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I'm glad that English has neutral gender nouns (apart from a few examples where we might simply have to add on an 'e') - all this masc./fem. malarkey sounds like a bloody pain to me.


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## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> why is it that, in English, it is the _female_ voice types which are spelled sopran*o*, mezz*o* sopran*o*, contralt*o*? wouldn't sopran*a*, mezz*a* sopran*a*, etc make more sense?


It probably has to do with the castrati - gelded males who sang female roles in opera. Women were not allowed to sing on the stage or in church.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Exactly what shigolch said in post 4. They are Italian terms (like many musical terms) and they are masculine nouns in Italian. Gender has nothing to do with it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

elgars ghost said:


> I'm glad that English has neutral gender nouns (apart from a few examples where we might simply have to add on an 'e') - all this masc./fem. malarkey sounds like a bloody pain to me.


German is worse. It has masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns and articles. It would be bad enough if masculine, feminine, and neuter words all referred to things with appropriate gender qualities. But no such luck.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> German is worse. It has masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns and articles. It would be bad enough if masculine, feminine, and neuter words all referred to things with appropriate gender qualities. But no such luck.


In German a girl (das Mädchen) is actually neuter instead of feminine. Mark Twain wrote a nice story once, satirizing these idiosyncrasies of the language.


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## Guest (Jun 4, 2015)

elgars ghost said:


> I'm glad that English has neutral gender nouns (apart from a few examples where we might simply have to add on an 'e') - all this masc./fem. malarkey sounds like a bloody pain to me.


Hardly. Consider these examples in English:
His car.
Her car.

In French :
Sa voiture.
Sa voiture.

Admittedly, if there was any confusion in the French I would say "Sa voiture ... à lui/elle", but context (as always) is everything. So "_all this masc./fem. malarkey_" is not restricted to Latinate languages, is it? Personally, your comment strikes me as typical of monoglot anglophones.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Duplicate post.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

TalkingHead said:


> Hardly. Consider these examples in English:
> His car.
> Her car.
> 
> ...


Not at all - there are others as well. But English has far less of it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TalkingHead said:


> Hardly. Consider these examples in English:
> His car.
> Her car.
> 
> ...


The issue is gendered _nouns,_ not the gender of the person to whom the object of the noun belongs. Knowing whether a car is his or hers is useful; knowing whether a car is a masculine or feminine object when in fact it is neither is, I agree with elgar's ghost, malarkey.


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## Guest (Jun 4, 2015)

Fair enough. Where is the problem, exactly? Monoglot, anglophone linguistic ignorance/incompetence or something else?
As a point of interest (referring to the OP), in French one talks of "*le* soprane" (nm) and "*la* basse" (nf).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Having studied French (many years ago) I can say that having to learn a gendered article along with every noun, particularly when the gender of the article didn't seem to fit either the "masculine" or "feminine" qualities of the thing designated _or_ the sound of the noun being referred to, was an irritant that struck all of us anglophone linguistic ignoramuses as pointless - which it is. I suppose it's no problem if you grow up speaking French. German, with its three genders? Enough to drive one insane, trying to remember who or what gets _der, die,_ or _das._ Humans do have a tendency to shorten and streamline their verbal expressions, but gendered nouns seem carved in stone. English is such a messy language (a polyglot language, in fact), so full of pointless irregularities (see, I'm no anglophone!), that we should all be grateful we don't have definite articles that are masculine, feminine, neuter, gay, straight, bi, or transgendered. "The" suffices for anything you can name.


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## Guest (Jun 4, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Having studied French (many years ago) I can say that having to learn a gendered article along with every noun, particularly *when the gender of the article didn't seem to fit either the "masculine" or "feminine" qualities of the thing designated* _or_ the sound of the noun being referred to, was an irritant that struck all of us anglophone linguistic ignoramuses as pointless - which it is. I suppose it's no problem if you grow up speaking French. German,with its three genders? Enough to drive one insane, trying to remember who or what gets _der, die,_ or _das._ Humans do have a tendency to shorten and streamline their verbal expressions, but gendered nouns seem carved in stone. English is such a messy language (a polyglot language, in fact), so full of pointless irregularities (see, I'm no anglophone!), that we should all be grateful we don't have definite articles that are masculine, feminine, neuter, gay, straight, bi, or transgendered. "The" suffices for anything you can name.


_* Et violà*_ the problem in a nutshell, thank you so much Woodduck. There is nothing inherently "feminine" or "masculine" about nouns and your point painfully exposes the anglophone misconception of these terms and their usage. Reflect a moment on the English word "moon". In German, we have _Der Mond_ (nm); In French, _la lune_ (nf); in Spanish, _la luna_ (nf) and so on. Why then, Woodduck, do the Germans consdier the moon to be "masculine" and the latins consider it as being "feminine"? They are simply declinations. How on earth can you confuse a linguistic convention with a supposèd "gender" quality in a noun?


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> I suppose it's no problem if you grow up speaking French. German, with its three genders? Enough to drive one insane, trying to remember who or what gets _der, die,_ or _das._


It is more insane if you grow up speaking one language where every single noun, animate or inanimate, has a gender, and then you are trying to learn another language with gendered nouns, but the genders don't match. A car is feminine in Russian but neuter in German, a bridge is masculine in Russian but feminine in German etc. The notion of gendered nouns is not new to you, but you have to "unlearn" the genders from your own language first.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> English is such a messy language (a polyglot language, in fact), so full of pointless irregularities (see, I'm no anglophone!), that we should all be grateful we don't have definite articles that are masculine, feminine, neuter, *gay, straight, bi, or transgendered*. "The" suffices for anything you can name.


Shhhhhh.... don't give anyone ideas...


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## Guest (Jun 4, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> [...] "The" suffices for anything you can name.


Well not quite! One can refer to nouns without using the definite article. Consider the word "pain". I can use it thus:

a) I wish to inflict _*pain*_ (horrendous, excruciating, unremitting) on Wooddduck.

or

b) _*The pain*_ I wish to inflict on this fellow called Woodduck, if ever I got my hands on him, would be ... etc, etc.


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## Guest (Jun 4, 2015)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Shhhhhh.... don't give anyone ideas...


Well, I can see the joke, SL, but I can tell you that what really grates on my nerves are monoglot Anglo Saxons swanning around Europe, South America and Asia not deigning to make the slightest effort at speaking even a few words of the local lingo to help "oil the social contract", expecting all and sundry to understand English, their own often being delivered in a patois that borders on the incomprehensible.
A bit like that long sentence I just wrote.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

TalkingHead said:


> Why then, Woodduck, do the Germans consdier the moon to be "masculine" and the latins consider it as being "feminine"? They are simply declinations. How on earth can you confuse a linguistic convention with a supposèd "gender" quality in a noun?


Ooooo, but no, there IS the gender quality and more to it than declination. Here's a little hint:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lunar_deities#Europe

Four gods to fourteen goddesses and, surprisingly (or not), there is clear analogy between this divine company and linguistic gender of the moon in culturally related language.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

TalkingHead said:


> _* Et violà*_ the problem in a nutshell, thank you so much Woodduck. Reflect a moment on the English word "moon". In German, we have _Der Mond_ (nm); In French, _la lune_ (nf); in Spanish, _la luna_ (nf) and so on. Why then, Woodduck, do the Germans consdier the moon to be "masculine" and the latins consider it as being "feminine"? They are simply declinations. How on earth can you confuse a linguistic convention with a supposèd "gender" quality in a noun?


We were high school students encountering French. We had never heard of gendered nouns. We found the very idea amusing. We naturally looked for a rationale for choosing one gendered article over another. We tried to guess which article might belong to which noun. We discovered we couldn't guess, except usually in designating people (e.g. le garcon, la jeune fille). We learned that the gender of the article does not correspond to masculine or feminine qualities in things. It was a little disappointing for a bunch of kids who wanted life to make sense. We got over it.

You seem obsessed with anglophone misconceptions. You seem pleased to think you have found me in possession of one of them. Alas, I don't possess the one in question. Would you like to suggest another? Surely there is _some_ illusion about foreign tongues I suffer from, thus proving me a monoglot anglophone. You might even get a chance to use my nom de plume again.


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## SingingMoore (Jun 5, 2015)

I dont even know the anwser to this one...


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## Guest (Jun 5, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> [...] *You seem obsessed with anglophone misconceptions*. You seem pleased to think you have found me in possession of one of them. Alas, I don't possess the one in question. Would you like to suggest another? Surely there is _some_ illusion about foreign tongues I suffer from, thus proving me a monoglot anglophone. You might even get a chance to use my nom de plume again.


Woodduck! Mon cher Woodduck! No, I wouldn't say I'm obsessed but I do find _so many_ anglos to be pig ignorant outside of their countries. I can't tell you the number of times I've wanted to knife* some dumb tourist who blusters into the shops or markets here and without so much as a bye your leave announces in a loud voice (in English) that they want to know the price of this or that object on display.
Anyway, rant over, carry on.

(*) I exaggerate, of course. I would never knife anyone for their ignorance.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

If you are on vacation and planning to visit four countries and ten cities within fourteen days it is not very feasible to learn the language of each one of them. Apart from that fact, I agree with you.


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## Guest (Jun 5, 2015)

SiegendesLicht said:


> If you are on vacation and planning to visit four countries and ten cities within fourteen days it is not very feasible to learn the language of each one of them. Apart from that fact, I agree with you.


I wasn't saying one has to learn the languages of the countries one intends to visit, just that learning _*a few key phrases*_ shows the locals you have made the effort and care enough to show willing. It also is a matter of cultural respect. For example, I visited Thailand some years ago and I read up on their culture and customs and so on. I learnt that they always take off their footwear when entering homes or restaurants. What did I see? Badly dressed Brits, Yanks and Aussies entering the eaterie with their footwear on. This is what I call "Pig ignorant".


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Trust me, it is not only Anglo-Saxons, especially in Thailand.


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## Guest (Jun 5, 2015)

_A propos_ bad tourist behaviour, I have just received a PM giving this link to an article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/t...-following-string-embarrassing-incidents.html

PS: I am not at liberty to divulge the name of the kind TC member who gave me this info. Let's just say he's an Anglo-Saxon living in the US who posts under the nom de plume of


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## ma7730 (Jun 8, 2015)

MAS said:


> It probably has to do with the castrati - gelded males who sang female roles in opera. Women were not allowed to sing on the stage or in church.


Really...
Role Voice Type Premiere Cast 
Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar)	alto castrato	Francesco Bernardi, called Senesino
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt soprano Francesca Cuzzoni
Tolomeo, alto castrato	Gaetano Berenstadt
Cornelia, widow of Pompey contralto Anastasia Robinson
Sesto, her stepson soprano (en travesti) Margherita Durastanti
Achilla, Tolomeo's General bass Giuseppe Maria Boschi
Curio, Caesar's General bass John Lagarde
Nireno, servant alto castrato	Giuseppe Bigonzi

Francesca, Margherita and Anastasia are definately female names. Also, if there were no women, how could it be a soprano "en travesti", it wouldn't be. This is from by the way Giulio Cesare (I picked it because I have a fondness of it. Find ay other baroque opera and there are always female lead roles.)


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## ma7730 (Jun 8, 2015)

Sorry for how the cast came out to look. It doesn't look how I thought it would. Here is a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Cesare#Roles


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