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There Are Rules For Most Gender Determinations. Word-Endings That Identify Feminine Words Include

Spanish gender assigns all words as either masculine or feminine. This determines the form of adjectives and articles used with nouns. For example, "days" is masculine so it uses "buenos" while "afternoons" and "nights" are feminine so they use "buenas". Word endings often indicate gender, such as words ending in "o" usually being masculine and "a" usually being feminine. However, gender does not relate to the meaning or characteristics of the word itself.

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44 views

There Are Rules For Most Gender Determinations. Word-Endings That Identify Feminine Words Include

Spanish gender assigns all words as either masculine or feminine. This determines the form of adjectives and articles used with nouns. For example, "days" is masculine so it uses "buenos" while "afternoons" and "nights" are feminine so they use "buenas". Word endings often indicate gender, such as words ending in "o" usually being masculine and "a" usually being feminine. However, gender does not relate to the meaning or characteristics of the word itself.

Uploaded by

Khawla Adnan
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Spanish gender All Spanish words have gender. What does it mean to have gender in language?

Why are some words called masculine and others feminine? Does gender have anything to do with the meaning of the word itself? The answer to that is "not usually." Notice that the expression for "Good morning" is Buenos das while the expressions for "Good afternoon" and "Good evening" are Buenas tardes and Buenas noches, respectively. This difference is a result of gender, the idea of words being masculine or feminine: Tardes (afternoons) and Noches (nights) are feminine words while Das(days) is a masculine word. El libro/un libro [the book/a book] is masculine because it ends in o and uses the articles el and un. It has nothing to do with whether books are read or written by men. La polica [the police force] is a feminine word but that doesn't mean that it is run or staffed by women, or is a feminine profession. Gender is simply a categorization which determines the form of adjectives and articles which modify nouns. We could think of the classification as simply: Category 1 (masculine) Category 2 (Feminine)

However, words that identify people must agree with the gender of the person being described. For example, the word for child (boy) is nio and the word for child (girl) is nia. The same occurs for the words for male and female teenagers, muchachos and muchachas. There are rules for most gender determinations.

Word-endings that identify feminine words include:


most words ending with "-a" all words ending with "-cin, -sin, -tad, -dad, -tud, -umbre, -cia"

Examples: la pizarra, la leccin, la libertad, la verdad, la virtud, la muchedumbre, la presencia

Word-endings that identify masculine words include:


Most words ending with " -o" All words ending with " -aje, -or, -ambre, -n, a stressed (accented) vowel such as or " Most words ending with "r, l, s, n"

Examples: el cuaderno, el equipaje, el amor, el enjambre, el marzapn, el rub, el champ, el valor, el caon, el paraguas

Words ending in "e" have to be learned with their article:

el pupitre, la clase, el coche, la serpiente

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