Learning Spanish: Masculine or feminine?

In Spanish all nouns are either masculine or feminine. The neutral concept of ‘it’ does not really exist. You’ll usually have no difficulty in deciding the gender of people, but how do you know whether a table or a chair is masculine or feminine?

There are very few instances of assigning gender to inanimate objects and abstract concepts in English. If you are not sure what I am talking about, just think of the way we refer to ships as ‘she’ rather than ‘it’ and remember this is the rule for all Spanish
It is so important to pay attention to the gender of a noun because all articles and adjectives applied to the noun have to agree with it. Yes – articles and adjectives also have masculine and feminine, as well as singular and plural forms.
When you look up new words to learn in your Spanish–English dictionary you will notice the Spanish word is always marked with either the letter ‘f’ or ‘m’, to denote its gender. Always make a note of the gender alongside the word in question.
Luckily, this aspect of the Spanish language quite easy to get to grips with, as the rules applicable to the majority of nouns are pretty straightforward.
However, rules are made to be broken and there are plenty of words you will have to memorise with their articles. Sometimes the gender of a noun seems to be illogical, as very often the words we associate strongly with feminine matters are masculine.

Some general rules
* As a general rule, all nouns ending with the letter ‘o’ are masculine, so when you see words such as banco (bank), teléfono (telephone), periódico (newspaper) and bolso (handbag), you know they are masculine.
* Nouns ending with the letter ‘a’ are generally feminine and include casa (house), mesa (table), silla (chair) and ventana (window).
* Words ending in ‘ción’ and ‘sión’ are always feminine. Examples are habitación (room), descripción (description), actuación (performance) and televisión (guess what!).
* Notable exceptions to these rules are common words including problema (guess again!) mapa (map), mano (hand) and moto (motorbike). Sometimes there is a reason for this, as in the cases of foto (short for fotografía) and moto (abbreviation of motocicleta) – sometimes there is not.
* Other nouns give no clue as to their gender, as is the case of coche (car), autobús (bus) and nariz (nose). We just have to learn these by heart.

The definite article
We don’t give a thought to the definite article when we speak English, as it is always the same word – the. In Spanish there are four words for the, taking into account whether the noun it refers to is masculine, feminine, singular or plural.

Masculine ‘the’ forms
Singular  - el
Plural - los
Feminine ‘the’ forms
Singular - la
Plural - las

When you learn a new word, therefore, you should try and learn it with its article to help you remember whether it is masculine or feminine.

Masculine
el banco, el teléfono, el coche, el autobús
Feminine
la casa, la nariz, la mano, la habitación

The indefinite article
Not something we think about much as English speakers, either. Spanish also has four forms of the indefinite article that correspond to the words a/an  and some/any in English. A common mistake made by Spanish learners is to confuse the number one, uno, with un, which means a/an.

Masculine forms
Un - unos
Feminine forms
Una - unas

Masculine
un periódico, un bolso, un mapa, un hotel
Feminine
una habitación, una foto, una actuación, una nariz

Plural nouns
In Spanish the plural of nouns is generally formed either by adding an ‘s’ to a final vowel or ‘es’ to a final consonant. A final ‘z’ is replaced with ‘ces’.

Singular - Plural
mano - manos
casa - casas
nariz - narices

Test yourself
1. Which word is masculine?
a