Nouns have Gender

Take a look at these Spanish sentences:

Él es un padre.	He is a father.
Él es el padre.	He is the father.
Él es el abuelo.	He is the grandfather.
Ella es la madre.	She is the mother.
Es la silla.	It is the chair.
Es una silla.	It is a chair.
Es una casa.	It is a house.
Es la casa.	It is the house.

Here we see a whole mix of words, we see “el” and “la” as a translation of “the” and “un” and “una” as a translation of “a” and “an”. But how come there are two translations? Of course they both are right, otherwise we wouldn’t show them to you. But how can it be possible that the word “the” and “a and an” have two translations in Spanish? This has to do with the difficult concept of noun gender, a concept not known in English but is in almost every other language. In most other languages a noun has a certain gender. So you’re telling me a noun can be a boy or a girl? Indeed…that’s what we’re saying. A noun has a certain gender. In Spanish (and many other Latin languages) there are two genders: masculine and feminine. Every noun (note that this gender concept only applies to nouns) has one of these two genders. How to determine what gender it has isn’t very hard. And can be explained using a number of guidelines:

• Nouns ending in O are usually masculine.
• Nouns ending in A are usually feminine
• Nouns ending in MA are masculine
• Nouns ending in DAD, TAD, TUD, IÓN, EZ and UMBRE are feminine
• Others ending on a consonant are usually masculine

Gender

Most grammar rules are dependent of the gender of the noun, so you’ll have to learn the gender of each noun. One grammar rule that is gender-dependent is the translation of the articles “the, a and an”. When the noun to which the article applies is a masculine noun then “the” is translated as “el”. If the article applies to a feminine noun then the article that has to be used is “la”. Note that “el” and “la” are only used with singular nouns. When the noun is plural you use “los” for masculine nouns and “las” for feminine nouns. This also applies to the indefinite article (“a and an”). In Spanish you use “un” when the noun is masculine and singular and “una” when it’s feminine and singular. In Spanish there also exists a plural indefinite article. While we in English can’t say (“a houses and a tables”), in Spanish this is possible. You can use “unos” for masculine nouns and “unas” for feminine nouns. This could translate as “some” or “a couple of” in English.

Well, this noun gender concept might have confused you a bit. For English speaking people it can be a weird concept. But if English is not your native language then it’s most likely that you are already familiar with noun gender.