Gender of the samba
Un article de Samba en France.
Of course, in English there is no problem: you just speak about samba. But in Portuguese and in French samba has a gender.
In French everyone says "la samba" (feminine). And yet, in Portuguese, samba is masculine... What are the reasons of this change? Actually, when this word came to France, it was linked to the Brasilian dance fashion of the late 1950s. Samba ends with an 'a', and as a dance ("danse" is a feminine word in French), everyone or so thought it was feminine.
But purists or sambistas that speak more or less Portuguese know that they should say "le samba" (masculine). And so they do. Then this word has both genders, which is quite a rare thing in French. Now "le samba" tends to mean the music, while "la samba" is preferred when talking of the dance. This is not an absolute rule, but if you follow it, you will be considered as a connaisseur in the circle of the amateurs :-)
