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.
If only languages were learly so logical Like Spanish, German has a strict rule for associating gender with every noun. There is not only Masculine and Feminine but also Neutral (like it’ in English). The things get more complicated when the genders switch forms with tenses and grammar structure. There is absolutely no logic behind these genders, and they have apparently just come into usage’ with time. For example:Water is neutral and so is Beer. Milk is feminine and wine is Masculine.Train is masculine, Car is neutral.Boy is masculine, but girl is neutral.Sun is feminine, moon is masculine.goes on and on Hindi is so much better !!