3 Clever Tricks to Differentiate Masculine and Feminine Nouns

The Spanish language has a feature, so–to–speak, called grammatical gender. Each noun has a gender assigned to it, and parts of the sentence can change based on this gender. English does not have grammatical gender. This is often one of the biggest hurdles of learning Spanish (but not for you because you have this guide).

On the surface, finding the gender of a noun doesn't seem intuitive. However, this guide will help you learn the basics of using gender correctly.

A general rule for determining grammatical gender

You can determine the grammatical gender of a noun by looking at the last couple of letters of the word.

• If a noun ends in the letters E or O, then it is likely masculine.
• If it ends with an A, then it is likely feminine.

This is an excellent rule of thumb. There are exceptions, however. See more details for each gender below.

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1. Masculine nouns

In addition to ending with E or O, masculine nouns in Spanish often end in the letters L, R, N, or S. Take heart for example:

You'll also encounter endings like -MA, -PA and -TA. These nouns are generally masculine as well. For example:

The examples given above are also exceptions to the general rule we introduced. In this case, the letter A looks like it makes the noun feminine, however these nouns are masculine.

2. Feminine nouns

Feminine nouns in Spanish most commonly end in -A. There's a couple other endings that do tend to popup:

• -DAD, -TAD, or -ED
• -SION or -CIÓN
• -DEZ
• -TIS or -IZ

Here's a popular one:

As with masculine nouns, these endings are not absolute (i.e., you'll find some masculine nouns ending with these letters).

3. Ambiguous gender

There are also nouns that can be treated as feminine or masculine. These are known as ambiguous nouns. When you encounter these, pay special attention to contextual clues. For example, pronouns (e.g., he, she, we, they) in the sentence can be helpful. We've covered some ways to get better at recognizing these:

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Using these clues can be helpful, as many ambiguous nouns change meaning depending on gender. The word cura, for example, may seem like a feminine noun based on the rules mentioned above. However, we can use the masculine article el to make the priest:

If we switch it to the feminine article la, the priest becomes the cure.

In this case, a small change can mean a whole world of difference.

Quick tip

Practice makes perfect, right? Observe your surroundings throughout the day and try to identify the gender of different items. This will make speaking Spanish feel more natural as you are prepared with the knowledge of grammatical gender.