¿Por qué en este versiculo de la Biblia que sigue se dice "alma mía" y no "alma mío"?
Salmos 42:1-2 Reina-Valera 1960 (RVR1960)
42. Como el ciervo brama por las corrientes de las aguas,
Así clama por ti, oh Dios, el alma mía.
¿Por qué en este versiculo de la Biblia que sigue se dice "alma mía" y no "alma mío"?
Salmos 42:1-2 Reina-Valera 1960 (RVR1960)
42. Como el ciervo brama por las corrientes de las aguas,
Así clama por ti, oh Dios, el alma mía.
It has been translated as alma mía because alma is a feminine noun. The fact that it is preceded by el is because it is stressed on the first a and it would not be euphonious to say la alma mía
As stated by 'Walter Mitty's' comment it's important to explain why el alma
, rather than la alma
(maybe it's the origin of OP's confusion on the use of the feminine or masculine possesive).
Alma is a feminine noun. However, there's an interesting rule in Spanish regarding the use of la
(the feminine definite article) and el
(masculine definite article). The Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas (DPD) states the following:
2.1. El artículo femenino la toma obligatoriamente la forma el cuando se antepone a sustantivos femeninos que comienzan por /a/ tónica.
In plain english, this means that we have to use el
in all feminine nouns that begin with a stressed letter a. This doesn't mean that the gender of the noun is changing! We only change the article. Exemples (these are all feminine nouns):
el
).el
).la
).In your example (el alma mía
) we use the feminine possessive (mía
) because alma
is a feminine noun. However, we use el
(the masculine article), because the first "a" in alma
is stressed.