1.1.- Gender of nouns in Spanish
One of the first things you need to know when you start studying Spanish is that there is a big difference between English and Spanish in the way we treat gender in nouns.
In English, a noun is simply a noun; you don’t have to worry about a noun having a gender (a masculine or feminine designation).
In Spanish, however, every noun has a gender, and the gender of a noun very often determines the spelling of other words in the sentence.
VIDEO TIMELINE:
In this first section we talk about:
- Min 00:12 = Differences between gender of nouns in Spanish and English.
- Min 02:54 = How to identify the gender in any word?
- Min 05:47 = The rules for gender in the Spanish nouns.
1.1.- GENDER OF NOUNS
IN SPANISH:
1.- DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GENDER OF NOUNS
IN SPANISH AND ENGLISH:
The noun, also called substantive, is a variable word, which designates either an animated being (a person or an animal), or an inanimate thing (an object or an idea).
One of the first things you need to know when you start studying Spanish is that there is a big difference between English and Spanish in the way we treat gender in nouns.
In English, a noun is simply a noun;
you don’t have to worry about a noun having a gender
(a masculine or feminine designation).
In Spanish, however, a noun has a gender,
and the gender of a noun very often determines the spelling
of other words in the sentence.
In Spanish, nouns are either masculine or feminine,
grammatically speaking
In Spanish, nouns are either masculine or feminine, grammatically speaking. Sometimes, this classification will not make sense to the English-speaking student.
For example, “la mesa” (the table) is not viewed, by an English-speaking person, as an object with a “feminine” nature, but as an inanimate object, so the gender of this word is neuter in English.
But in Spanish, “mesa” is a feminine noun and all the words that refer to her must also be in their feminine form: the definite article has to be LA (which is the Spanish feminine equivalent of THE) and the adjective has to be BONITA, instead of BONITO, BONITA is the feminine equivalent of the English adjective NICE.
So, I understand that this could be difficult at first. In fact, one of the main indicators that a person is not fluent in Spanish is the mix-up in the gender of articles, nouns and adjectives. If a person says: “el mesa es bonito”, well…I can see that this person is not very fluent in Spanish, because EL is the Spanish masculine equivalent of THE, and BONITO is the masculine form of BONITA.
The right expression is “la mesa es bonita”, in which the article and the adjective take the gender (and the number) of the noun.
By the way, remember the following rule:
Nouns have no neuter gender in Spanish,
they are all either masculine or feminine.
2.- HOW TO IDENTIFY THE GENDER
IN ANY WORD?
Let’s keep using the word MESA for this explanation.
Well, if we read the expression “LA MESA ES BONITA”, we can see that “mesa” is a feminine noun because of three reasons:
Reason 1: because of the definite article LA
LA is always a feminine article, so this is telling us that the word that is next to it is a feminine noun.
In expressions like “la mesa” or “el mundo”, the feminine article LA and the masculine article EL are placed before the nouns and indicate the gender. EL and LA are the equivalent of the English definite article THE.
El is the masculine singular and LA is the feminine singular
So, when you know whether a noun is masculine or feminine in Spanish you have to choose the correct definite article to match that noun.
Or, if we think about it in a different way, if you see a feminine definite article like LA before a noun, then you can say that this noun is a feminine noun.
Remember:
In Spanish the noun is the core of the noun phrase
and determines the spelling of other words in the phrase.
The noun is the most important word
and the other ones have to adapt.
Reason 2: because the word MESA ends with the letter -A
The word MESA ends with the letter -A, which is an indicator of grammatical gender.
In Spanish, most of the nouns that end with the letter -A are feminine.
I repeat:
Most (but not all) of the words that end with the letter -A
are feminine in Spanish
We will study this rule later.
Reason 3: because of the form of the adjective BONITA.
Remember the two previous rules:
1.- In Spanish, the noun is the core of the noun phrase
and determines the spelling of other words in the phrase.
2.- In Spanish most (but not all) of the words
that end with the letter -A are feminine.
So, if the adjective ends with the letter -A and we understand that it is an adjective in the feminine form, we can fathom that the noun, the core of the noun phrase, is also feminine.
3.- THEN, WHAT ARE THE RULES FOR GENDER
IN THE SPANISH NOUNS?
In Spanish, there are some general rules about the gender of nouns, but those rules are not absolute.
Generally speaking, the gender is associated with specific word endings.
Nouns that end with the letter -O are usually masculine and nouns that end with the letter -A are usually feminine.
But this is not an absolute rule, there are a lot of exceptions. We’ll talk about those exceptions later, let’s talk about the general rules now.
Nouns that end with the letter -O are usually masculine:
El año (the year)
El caballo (the horse)
El catálogo (the catalogue)
El queso (the cheese)
El zapato (the shoe)
Nouns that end with the letter -A are usually feminine:
La semana (the week)
La yegua (the mare)
La página (the page)
La lechuga (the lettuce)
La camisa (the shirt)
However, some Spanish nouns are tricky because they end with the letter -O but are feminine, while other nouns end with the letter -A but are masculine.
We are going to talk about that in a moment (in the next section).
And this is the end of this section.
Thank you for watching!
I’ll see you in the next video!
Lesson 1: gender of nouns in Spanish
1.0.- Gender of nouns in Spanish: Introduction
1.1.- Gender of nouns in Spanish
1.2.- Masculine nouns and their endings in Spanish
1.3.- Feminine nouns and their endings in Spanish
1.4.- Forming the feminine nouns in Spanish
1.5.- Lesson 01 Evaluation Test