Talk:los

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los

English, meaning 'the'. Los Angeles isn't from los + Angeles but wholly from Spanish (see angeles). Is this used to mean 'the'? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:44, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The one example is simply wrong, historically. The city of Los Angeles was originally named (in Spanish), as "el Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula", the Town of Our Lady the Queen of Angels of w:Porziuncula, "el Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles", that is, "the City of the Queen of Angels", for short. Over the years it shortened to "Los Angeles". Most residents who don't speak Spanish would have no clue what "angeles" means, since it's never been used as an English word hereabouts as far as I've heard in my half-century-plus living here.

It may be possible to cite in terms like "los guys", but I think this is code-switching by Spanish-English bilinguals, i.e., Spanglish. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:31, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

How does that make it not English? (PS: Los Lonely Boys comes to mind.) —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:39, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

How about some citations? I bet what emerges is that there are some expressions like "los boys" and "los guys" that are acceptable, but general usage such as "los publication in an ophthalmological journal" isn't going to work. --BB12 (talk) 23:33, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

That ignores the nature of code switching: choice of a given language is usually associated with a particular attitude, feeling, or context. For a Spanish speaker in an English-speaking society, Spanish may be the language of the familiar, the informal, or the heart-felt, so one would say los guys, because one's buddies are of personal emotional significance to the speaker, but "publication in an ophthalmological journal" generally isn't (a few wannabee published ophthalmologists notwithstanding). That said, code switching is a real minefield, because it could lead to entire semantic categories of terms in other languages being potentially deemed as English, because they can show up in grammatically-English sentences of code-switched English. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:25, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. I feel that having citations is critical to determining what sorts of phrases "los" is used with. That will also help determine if there's code switching going on or if it is a genuine English word. If "los" is used in a clearly English context, we still need to determine what the semantic scope is. Can it be used for singular nouns? Can it be used in formal contexts? Those are all questions that have to be answered by citations. --BB12 (talk) 03:54, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I think it's significant that it's the name of a band. You can easily find all kinds of odd constructions in names of bands and book, movie, or song titles. There's no requirement for them to be grammatical, but there's plenty of motivation to play games with language to make them distinctive and memorable. Chuck Entz (talk) 00:25, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I think if "los" is considered English, "el" certainly should be as well. I've never actually heard los used this way, but I have seen newspapers use ad hoc compounds like "el stinko", which is clearly English, not Spanish with an English loanword. You could even find "el house-o" etc. For Los Lonely Boys I'd say you could analyze it either way, or even just as a mixed language neither English nor Spanish. Also, I guess my "el" examples are actually examples of "el .... -o".Soap (talk) 12:34, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Sense deleted. bd2412 T 12:40, 26 August 2013 (UTC)