What determines masculinity or feminity in Spanish?What determines masculinity or feminity in Spanish? Is it applied to all nouns or verbs or adjectives or what? I realize that most words, but not all, feminine/masculine words end in a/o and those that don't follow normalcy have to be memorized, but I am confused as to what it is that makes it normally feminine or masculine. All nouns in Spanish are either masculine or feminine. People who grow up speaking Spanish learn the gender of all words as part of learning to speak. As a matter of fact, Spanish speakers probably think it’s weird that English nouns don’t have gender. Each noun has an article that goes with it. You’ve got to memorize the article when you memorize the word. That noun isn’t going anywhere without the article. They’re like bff.
Like our friend Fabio has noticed, the gender of nouns doesn’t have much to do with the meaning of the noun itself. Even though a dress is usually worn by female, it’s a masculine noun in Spanish. Along the same lines, there’s nothing particularly girly about an apple, or anything particularly butch about a plate. You’re not going to make sense of it if you think of it this way.
Most of the time, words that end with “a” are feminine. The definite feminine article is “la.” (I’ll explain to you what a definite article is a little later on. For now, just think of it as “the.”)
Most of the time words that end with “o” are masculine.
Nouns that end in -sión, -ción, -dad, -tad, and -tud, are feminine.
Nouns that end with “e” can go either way. They’re pretty wild like that. Every once in a while, feminine nouns end with “o” and masculine nouns end with “a.”
The gender of nouns for people always correspond to the gender of the person they’re describing
These gender bending nouns don’t come along too often. Every once in a while actual ending of the word does not change, but the article still changes depending on the gender of the person:
Most nouns that refer to roles or jobs that end with “ista” or “eta” don’t change their ending along with their gender:
Sometimes, the gender of the noun for animals change depending on the gender of the animal: Every once in a while, you use a totally different word for the female version and the male version of the same animal:
Sometimes, the gender of the noun for the animal does not change:
You can’t say “el balleno.” Obviously, male whales exist. Otherwise, the species would not reproduce. If you don’t understand this concept, ask your parents. This is a grammar website and explaining this sort of thing to you just isn’t my job. Anyway, the whale is “la ballena” no matter is it’s male or female. Some other examples of this are:
Feminine words that begin with “a” or “ha” have the masculine article in the singular form only. Why? Well, all of these nouns are actual feminine. However, it sounds really sloppy to say “la ave.” Sounds like “lave,” which isn’t even a word. So to be clear, you say, “el ave.” Quirky, huh? For more information see: "Why do I say 'el alma' if 'alma' is a feminine word?" Abbreviations Sometimes certain nouns can be shortened, but their gender stays the same
|
Don't see your question listed?
 Search
Archives by category
Verb tenses SubjunctiveSer vs. Estar Articles Passive Voice Accents le/les and lo/la/los/las
Featured Error
My English class was translating from Spanish to English and they translated gallo pinto (a traditional food) to ´painted cock´ Looking
for a great Grammar Reference? Spanish Grammar Genius
Recommends
Word
of the Week:
Support SGG! (and learn to describe the various stages of being drunk)
Coming soon
Traveling to a Spanish Speaking country and need help with the basics? Check back November 15, 2007 for SGG's free audio download, 60 minute Survival Spanish.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Home Care San Francisco criminal defense attorney San Francisco california vacation rental
sitemap
![[whiteboard marker tray]](marker-tray.gif){kind=small}