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Essential Spanish Grammar – Feminine and Masculine Nouns

Gender plays an important role in romance languages, like Spanish. Spanish assigns gender for nouns, articles, and adjectives. Gender is a very important part of learning Spanish for English-speaking students.

There are two different genders in Spanish nouns: masculine and feminine. The last vowel usually makes the difference between masculine and feminine and adjectives.

Look at the following examples:

Exceptions to the Rule
There are many exceptions to this rule. Some of these include masculine nouns that end with "a", such as "día" (day) and "poema"(poem). "Mano" is feminine, on the other hand.

Articles:
Spanish articles also have gender. Nouns, adjectives, and articles must agree in gender. If a noun is feminine or masculine, the adjective and article also must be feminine or masculine.
El gato negro está sobre la mesa. (The black cat is on the table.)
La muchacha rubia estaba esperando un taxi. (The blond girl was waiting for a taxi.)
Note that: El gato negro (article, noun, and adjective are masculine)
                    La muchacha rubia (article, noun, and adjective are feminine)
                    Un taxi (both article and noun are masculine).
There are nouns, the so-called "comunes en cuanto al género," that do not change. In these nouns, gender is represented by articles and adjectives. For example:

Checking the gender of articles and adjectives is the best way to determine the gender of nouns.
There are exceptions to this rule as well. This exception happens when the noun begins with a stressed "a". All the examples below are feminine nouns but the article has to be used in its special form of "el" when the noun is used as a singular noun. When the nouns are plural, the common form of the feminine article (las) must be used.

Look at these examples:

• El ala de la paloma (The wing of the pigeon)
• El agua estaba fría. (The water was cold.)

In the first example, the gender of "ala" is not clear. It becomes clearer with an adjective:

• El ala blanca de la paloma

This happens in the second example where the adjective "fría" is feminine.
Finally, there are the so-called "epicenos," which are nouns without a clear gender.

In this case, the use of "macho o hembra" (male or female) will help.

• El sapo macho es más fuerte. (The male toad is stronger.)

The use of macho and hembra is inappropriate when talking about persons. Other words -- masculino, femenino, varón o mujer -- are the best choice.

• Los personajes masculinos del libro (The male characters in the book)

Finally, nouns are never neutral. Adjectives and articles can be neutral, however. This happens, for example in adjectives that describe quantity (poco, mucho), demonstrative adjectives (esto, eso), and neutral articles (lo, los).
One example is:

• Esto es lo que ella me dijo. (This is what she told me.)