All nouns have gender (masculine or feminine) in Spanish. Now, how can you recognise if a noun is masculine or feminine in Spanish?
Watch the video below for a short and sweet explanation.
Masculine or Feminine in Spanish?
Let’s go into more detail. In the following part we will talk about:
- How to find out if a word is masculine or feminine in Spanish?
- How to transform a masculine word into a feminine one
- How to transform a singular word into a plural one
Endings
(masculine/feminine, singular/plural)
- GENRE: masculine – feminine
All the nouns in Spanish have genre, they are masculine or feminine. There are few rules that help us to decide what is the genre of the noun:
– In general, all nouns that end in: -o, -ón and -r are masculine.
el perro – the dog el teclado – the keyboard
el libro – the book el cuaderno – the notebook
– In general, all nouns that end in -a, -ción, -sión, -dad, -tad are feminine.
la rata – the rat la casa – the house
la canción – the song la motivación – the motivation
la verdad – the truth la piedad – the mercy
la libertad – the liberty la amistad – the friendship
But there are a lot of exceptions:
el mapa – the map
la mano – the hand
el problema – the problem
– The nouns that end in -e or in other consonants can be masculine or feminine.
la nube – the cloud el hombre – the man
el árbol – the tree la miel – the honey
– The nouns that end in -ista can be masculine and feminine (because they are professions)
el, la periodista – the journalist
el, la masajista – the masseur
- Masculine to Feminine: In order to change a masculine word into a feminine one, for the professions for instance, we have this 3 rules:
- The words that end in -o change the “o” into an “a”
el fotógrafo > la fotógrafa – the photographer
el panadero > la panadera – the baker
- The words that end in consonant add an “a”
el profesor > la profesora – the teacher
el boxeador > la boxeadora – the boxer
el escritor > la escritora – the writer
- The words that end in “e”:
3.1 don’t change
el cantante > la cantante – the singer
el estudiante > la estudiante – the student
3.2 change the “e” for an “a”
el dependiente > la dependienta – the shop assistant
- There are nouns that have a word for masculine and another for feminine:
el padre / la madre – the father / the mother
el toro / la vaca – the bull / the cow
el gallo / la gallina – the rooster / the hen
- NUMBER: singular – plural
There are two rules to transform a singular noun into plural:
- Add an “s”
el perro > los perros
la casa > las casas
- Add “es” with the words that end in consonant.
el profesor > los profesores
la canción > las canciones
2.1 When the word end in “z” it changes to “c” and add “es”
el pez > los peces
Finally, if you want to practice your listening skills, here I leave you with a video class about this topic in Spanish with subtitles in Spanish.
