LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

  Someone in Instragram, and in Spanish, is recomending Netflix´s "The Queen´s Gambit" and says it is about a girl who "aprende a jugar ajedrez..." I hear it often now, the absence of the article, after "jugar." But in Spanish, the right way has always been, and still is, "jugar al ajedrez," just as some people "juega a las cartas" o "al tenis" o "al escondite." Beware of natives misleading you. May it be a borrowing from English?

Chloe, my eldest granddaughter, is set on improving her Spanish and thinks I can help her. She has a genetic knack for the language and yet la mano, el pie, el dedo, la muñeca , baffle her. And rightly so! I have decided not to mention genders, masculine, femenine or neuter. And certainly I will never tell her that Spanish has "masculino, femenino, neutro, común, epiceno y ambiguo." I have simplified this business by pointing out that certain words use "el": el alma, el casco, el hampa, and others use "la": la alberca, la desgracia, la taxista. And I add that some other words use "lo": lo bueno, lo cortés, lo rico." And that is the way the cookie crumbles, I may add.  What we read is "el libro." What we buy with in England is "la libra." I never explain rules or what-have you. Neither rhyme nor reason governs the idiom of a people, as Pearsall-Smith, the Quaker, put it. What I do with Chloe, at this stage, is correct her ...