3.13 Articles and gender of nouns Spanish
Instrucciones
Read and watch a video about articles and gender in the Spanish language.
Nouns and gender
All nouns (a person, place, thing or idea) in Spanish have gender. Most of the time, nouns are either grammatically masculine or feminine.
Generally, nouns that end in -o are masculine and nouns that end in -a are feminine. An example of a masculine noun is “el carro”. An example of a feminine noun is “la computadora”.
Las excepciones
There are some exceptions to the general rule mentioned above. For example, “el día” (the day) ends with an “a” but is masculine and “la mano” (the hand) ends with an -o but is feminine. Common exceptions to the general rule are words from the Greek language.
So how can you tell whether a noun is masculine or feminine?
The only way to really know whether a noun is masculine of feminine is to look at the article. Articles are words like “the,” “a” and “an.” En español, there are two types of articles:
- Definite articles
- Indefinite articles.
Examples:
Definite articles
el = the (singular, masculine)
la = the (singular, feminine)
los = the (plural, masculine)
las = the (plural, feminine)
Indefinite articles
un = a/an (singular, masculine)
una = a/an (singular, feminine)
unos = some (plural, masculine)
unas = some (plural, feminine)
Watch this video to learn the basics of masculine and feminine articles:
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