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Essential Spanish Grammar – All About Nouns

Nouns (nombres or sustantivos in Spanish) are words used to designate things, persons, animals, or abstract concepts. Nouns have gender and number in Spanish.

The best way to know the gender of Spanish nouns is checking the article (la for feminine and el for masculine) and adjective, if there is one.

The last vowel usually indicates the noun's gender. "A" is usually feminine and "o" is usually masculine.

There are exceptions to this rule. For example, the following nouns are all masculine even though they end in "a":

Notice that many of the nouns above end in "-ma" or "-ta". They are from the Greek language. While the majority of nouns ending in "-ma" or "-ta" tend to be masculine, including those listed above, there are some nouns ending in "-ma" or "-ta" that are feminine, as evidenced below:

Don't forget that "mano" (hand) is feminine!

When the subject has more than one noun, and one noun is feminine while the other is masculine, the gender of the subject is masculine. Look at the following example:

Tengo una gata y un gato. Mis gatos son mis amigos. (I have a female cat and a male cat. My cats are my friends.)  "Amigos" is masculine.

When a masculine noun ends with a consonant, sometimes a final "a" is added to form the feminine noun.

Nouns ending in "-ad" are often feminine:

There are nouns where the feminine and masculine forms are completely different words.

Finally, there are nouns that change their meanings when their genders are changed: