Grammatical Gender of Brand Products in Spanish | Specific language questions | Forum

I doubt there is an actual rule. But common sense dictates you treat the brand-name as if it were it's generic counterpart; that is, sub Kit-Kat for 'chocolate' and Coca-Cola for 'gaseosa' or 'bebida' and the rest of the sentence should no longer be a problem.

Martín Raúl Villalba said
Even though it is true you'll find many such exceptions, they are all grammatically incorrect and using them leads to a rather interesting problem: when you say "el Internet" in a region where it's normal to use it, it sounds perfectly normal. But what happens when you say "el Coca-Cola", or use the former expression in a place where the local speakers don't? You sound horribly ungrammatical, which begs the question: why bother learning this little ungrammatical exceptions when you can use the correct form and be understood everywhere without sounding weird/ungrammatical depending on who you are speaking to?

I am not sure if I get your point, but I'd just say that there's not such "grammatically correct" gender for brands. If you say "el internet" in a place where people say "la internet" you will sound horribly ungrammatical, but so will you if you say "la internet" somewhere where people say "el internet", or at least that's what I think.

A good example I can think of is the word "psp", I have some Latin American friends who say "el psp" and it sounds absolutely horrible to me; but when I say "la psp" they feel the same way.

I think that we also tend to use the "-a" rule sometimes, at least in Spain. So we say "la Fanta" and "el Kas" when both are sodas. I would include the Kit-Kat example here as I would say it is "una chocolatina".

Ok, I guess it's complicated!

Perhaps I'm the weird one in this case; I don't find "la Internet", nor "una Kit-Kat" (assuming Iberian Spanish) among many other to be weird or ungrammatical despite them not being used at all over here for I know which is the proper way of saying things. But I do find "el Internet" to be rather annoying even though I hear it all the time and even use it on ocassion.

@Casiopea: About your PSP example, keep in mind in Latin America (or at least here in Argentina), a PSP is a 'videojuego', not a 'consola', which makes both articles valid depending on the dialect of the speaker. I'd think it ungrammatical if you used them the other way aroung, though.

As for the Fanta/Kas example, don't you use 'refresco' too? That would make it valid. But granted, people tend to do the same over here, though I doubt to the same point. At least I can't think of an example were that would be the case right now. We do, after all, say things like 'una Marinaro de naranja', for an orange-flavored Marinaro-branded soda.

It depends.

If we are talking about Skippy Peanut Butter, Kit Kats, or any other branded product that did not originate in the Spanish-speaking world, the English (or other language) name will be used.  For all (or nearly all, there may be a few exceptions) loanwords that have not been completely adapted into the language, the masculine article should be used.  Take for example:  el internet, el punk, el jazz, el DVD, el GPS, la coca-cola (oops… there always has to be an exception, right?).