In Spanish, all nouns are either masculine or feminine, even words for things have a gender. Learning to recognize the gender of words will definitely help to have a good base for conversations with locals (it may sound quite wrong when saying a masculine noun in feminine and vice versa, specially basic words we use everyday).
Not only for the understanding in a conversation, the gender also affects the words in connection with the noun, which are the article and adjective.
Keys to recognize if a noun is masculine or feminine in Spanish
– The words ending in -o will usually be masculine and those ending in -a will be feminine. This is a first step to start checking words in a text or when listening. However, this is not valid for all words; There are some exceptions, for example:
.Masculine words ending in -a: el mapa (map), el alba (dawn)
.Feminine words ending in -o: la radio (radio), la mano (hand)
–Other ending of nouns:
| Masculine | |
|---|---|
| -aje | el garaje, el paisaje (landscape) |
| -ambre | el hambre (hunger), el enjambre (swarm) |
| -e | el restaurante |
| -er | el amanecer (sunrise) |
| -ma | el idioma (language) |
| -miento | el descubrimiento (discovery) |
| -n | el salón (living room) |
| -or | el humor |
| days of the week, months | el lunes (Monday), enero (January) |
| numbers | el uno, el dos |
| geographic nouns | el río, el océano |
| colors | el azul, el rojo |
| Femenine | |
|---|---|
| -ad | la novedad (news) |
| -ción | la canción (the song) |
| -d | la juventud (youth) |
| -ie | la intemperie (outdors) |
| -ncia | la paciencia (patience) |
| -sión | la decisión (decision) |
| -umbre | la costumbre (habit) |
| -z | la luz (light) |
| -zón | la razón (reason) |
| island names | Las Islas Canarias |
| alphabet letter | la a, la b… |
– If the noun is preceded by the article, it uses ‘el/los‘ for masculine and ‘la/las’ for feminine.
Additional information
Most nouns have a single form (either masculine or feminine gender). For example, la pared (wall), el árbol (tree). However, there are some nouns, for animals and persons, that have a different form depending if it refers to a male or female. When this happens, it may be formed using different rules:
- Two genders, two ways-Changing the end, instead of -o to -a: fotógrafo/fotógrafa (photographer), gato/gata (cat)
- Adding the ending -isa, -esa, -ina to masculine nouns:
- Changing the ending from masculine noun to feminine one: actor/actriz
- Different words for masculine and feminine: hombre/mujer (man/woman), yerno/nuera (son/daughter in law)
Besides that, there are those nouns which use same word for both genders: el periodista/la periodista (journalist); and the nouns defined as ‘epicenos’ that can refer both masculine and feminine with same article, so we can get the meaning from the context on which this word is used. For example, la cría (offspring) does not change the article and it may refer to masculine or feminine gender.
The information about number of nouns is available in the section plural.