Is it el Internet or la Internet?
Saturday December 13, 2003
From the forum: "I have seen many times here in New York, specially on government advertisements in Spanish on the subway, El Internet. (The Spanish translations of government advertisements here in New York are terrible, awful.) I really think that saying el Internet is not correct." But others on the forum have a different perspective. Join the discussion...
Comments
From what I’ve read and heard in both Spain, Southwest U. S. and Mexico it is el Internet. Many times words foreign to the language are made masculine and don’t follow the language norm for endings. One example is “programa” you’d think it’s la programa. But it’s el programa. The same could be said for mapa. But that’s as complex an explaination as I can give, not having access to the Royal Academy diccionario or a masters degree in grammer.
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I am a high school Spanish teacher with the same question. I have always seen “el internet” but my new Spanish II textbook teaches “la internet”. El internet would sound correct since it’s a noun that ends in a consonant, but la internet also could work since the word for net in Spanish is la red, a feminine noun. There seems to be no correct answer.
The correct trnslation for the internet is la Red.
From the point of view of a spanish speaker the word “internet” is the name of a particular “red” among many other kind of “redes” so it is almost a “nombre propio”. So, best without article: “Yo uso internet”, “Internet es una herramienta muy útil”
hi, i’m from spain and i’m living in Mexico about 3 years ago… well it’s funny because we had the same confussion about saying “el internet” o “la internet”, but the correct way is actually “la internet”, the correct translation is not “la red” it’s a kind of “red” (web) as antuán sayed … Internet is the particular name of the web, how ever; beacause of the fact that internet is a web, and in spanish “the web” is “la red” the correct way to say in spanish “the Internet” is “la internet”. It’s a little confussing i know … but it’s the way it is. Sorry if i wrote wrong some words or expressions, but i don’t speak english that well :s …
bye
Hi!! I’m from Argentina and here we use both entries, I think both are correct.
Pues todas las palabras que empiezan con Inter siempre se les dice “la” así que es “la internet”, pero no “la “ínternet” sino “la internét”
La Real Academia de la Lengua Española afirma que el artículo correcto a utilizar es “LA” y la palabra comienza con mayúscula. Por lo tanto el artículo correcto es LA y no EL. La Internet.
Elka W.
Editora Internacional
my native language is spanish.. I and the people around me, we say: EL INTERNET and i am sure almost spanish speakers says EL INTERNET. So… the correct way is: EL INTERNET
In my opinion, it depends on what the underlying noun in question refers to. If the operative notion here is “network” then, inevitably, it is just as feminine as “red” is. If the underlying idea is of a more abstract object comprising a protocol of connected computers, then it can be very well treated as male.
I would, however, also note that the DRAE insists on its capitalized usage, while indicating it is an ambiguous noun. As in many other similar instances, “correct” is more a function of context than a matter settled by authoritative reference.