sostenido/bemol

[Christopher A. LaFond]

Pierre Abbat wrote:
> But "bemol" is not an adjective. 

Yes, it is, according to the _Real Academia Española_. It is both an 
adjective and a noun (as is 'sostenido'). So the possibilities are:

Re sostenido / La nota sostenida.
Re bemol / La nota bemol.

If you do a Goolge search for "nota bemol", you will see that it is also 
used in common speech all the time.

Also, "cómo", as well as many other words, only bear a written accent 
when used in an interrogative (as a few others have pointed out). There 
may be places where it has become the custom to do so in 
non-interrogative situations (though I'm not aware of it), but that 
would have to be considered non-standard, and somewhat confusing to the 
majority of the world's readers of Spanish.

> And "diesis" would be 
> feminine if one followed the rule (which generally holds in French) that 
> masculine or feminine Greek or Latin nouns keep their gender, but I've heard 
> people say "el Génesis" and "el Apocalipsis". (Neuters do whatever they want. 
> Le sel dans la mer est plus que dans le sang - la sal en el mar es más que en 
> la sangre.)
>   

Though this is a good generalization (Latin/Greek gender transferring to 
gender in Romance Languages), it cannot be taken as an absolute. There 
are all sorts of things that happen linguistically to nouns (and all 
other types of words) as they pass into / become individuated languages. 
We can skip the details, since it's off topic.

--

         °
Chris    °
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 ><((((°>

Christopher A. LaFond
Asst. Coordinator of Intermediate Spanish
Lyons 311A
Boston College, Chestnut Hill MA
address@hidden, http://www2.bc.edu/~lafond
Office hours Fall 2006: MWF 11-1 (1-2 for grad students)