1.9.2 Grammatical gender of nouns
The students using this book have already seen gender agreement and the idea of such agreement should not be new. However, it is hard for native English speakers to put into practice because English does not have grammatical gender.
Grammatical gender
First and foremost, it is important to emphasize that all nouns in Spanish have one of two genders: masculine or feminine and the grammatical gender a noun has is not the same as biological sex or human gender, both of which will be discussed in more detail on the next page.
There are few hard and fast rules as to which words are masculine or feminine. The following table shows a few rules and some of their notable exceptions:
Masculine |
Feminine |
| Words that end in -o.
Notable exceptions: la mano. Short versions of longer feminine words: la foto. |
Words that end in -a.
Notable exceptions: -ma/-pa-/-ta ending words. For example, el problema. |
| Words that end in -l/-e/-r/-s | Words that end in -dad/-tad/-ud
Notable exceptions: none. All words that end in -dad/-tad/-ud are feminine. |
| Words that end in -n
Notable exceptions: words that end in -ción→ |
Words that end in -ción
Notable exceptions: none. All words that end in -ción are feminine. |
There are also words that have one form and the gender is only expressed in the article and the adjectives. For example:
El bebé/la bebé, el artista/la artista, el atleta/la atleta
Words with more than one gender
Some words in Spanish can be masculine or feminine. A few common examples are el sartén/la sartén, el mar/la mar, el azúcar/la azúcar. When you encounter one of these words, remember that it is more important to be consistent in your use of grammatical gender in one sentence rather than trying to figure out which is the “right” gender.
What agrees?
There are two elements of gender agreement with nouns: in the article (el or la) and in any related adjectives.
The easiest way to attack article agreement is to always learn the article with the noun. Learning the gender is part of learning new vocabulary!
Look up the following words, what do the words mean? What is the grammatical gender?
Lema
Caparazón
Remo
Coalición
Pulcritud
Activities
Feminine words that use the article “el”
Spanish has a few words are feminine but in the singular they use the article ‘el’. There is a linguistic process called allomorphism at play. Very briefly, allomorphism means that one word can have two forms that are used in specific contexts. In this case, the feminine article has two forms: la (most of the time) and el (in the special circumstance described here). El is a feminine article when preceding nouns that start with an accented sound ‘a’. Remember, these words are feminine will use the article ‘el’. For example:
El agua fría
El águila negra
El hacha afilada
