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Learn to Read and Speak the Spanish Language - Gender of Nouns, Part I
Place: garden, university, Venezuela Thing: book, car, tomato Idea: liberty, despair, intelligence In Spanish, all nouns are either masculine or feminine.
el chico boy el jardín garden el libro book el miedo fear Feminine la chica girl la universidad university la revista magazine la libertad liberty The idea that nouns have gender seems perfectly natural when the noun stands for a living creature. This is because in English, living creatures often have different names, depending upon whether they are male or female.
man tiger aviator Feminine woman tigress aviatrix The following Spanish nouns all denote living creatures.
male cat la gata female cat el perro male dog la perra female dog el chico boy la chica girl el abuelo grandfather la abuela grandmother How are all of these masculine nouns alike? Hint: look at both the beginning and the ending of each line.
el perro el chico el abuelo How are all of these feminine nouns alike? Hint: look at both the beginning and the ending of each line.
la perra la chica la abuela "El" and "la" both mean "the."
la chica (the girl)
la gata (the female cat) These two words (el, la) are called 'definite articles.' You will learn more about them in a later lesson. What do you notice about the last letter of these nouns?
gato perro chico abuelo Feminine gata perra chica abuela Nouns that
end in -o are usually masculine. Nouns that end in -a are usually
feminine. One cannot
predict the gender of a noun that stands for a non-living thing.
Try to predict whether the Spanish words for the following things
are masculine or feminine:
house money window One cannot predict the gender of a noun, except in the case of living creatures. Do not try to analyze the nature of the object, looking for some inherent masculinity or femininity. It won't work! Take a guess. Do you think the Spanish word for "dress" is masculine or feminine? You might expect it to be feminine, since a dress is an article of clothing worn by females. Actually, the word for "dress" is a masculine word:
Take another guess. Do you think the Spanish word for "necktie" is masculine or feminine? You might expect it to be masculine, since a necktie is an article of clothing worn by males. Actually, the word for "necktie" is a feminine word:
When you learn a new noun, you should also learn its definite article (el, la). There are several reasons for this:
Why do you care whether a noun is masculine or feminine? Good question! As you shall see in upcoming lessons, Spanish places a great deal more emphasis on gender than does English. Next Lesson: Gender of Nouns Part Two
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