Lesson 1.2: Noun Gender

Now that you’ve seen the pieces that make up Spanish words and sentences, let’s talk about one of the most foundational concepts in Spanish: noun gender.

In Spanish, every noun is assigned one of two genders: masculine or feminine. This is true of every single noun, even ones that refer to inanimate objects. For example, carro (car) is masculine, while bicicleta (bicycle) is feminine. This is actually very common in world languages, especially European ones.

The reason noun gender matters is because other words in the sentence often change their form depending on a noun’s gender. Here are the ways that can happen:

• “A” is translated as un for masculine nouns and una for feminine nouns. Examples: un carro (a car); una bicicleta (a bicycle)
• “The” is translated as el for masculine singular nouns, la for feminine singular nouns, los for masculine plural nouns, and las for feminine plural nouns. Examples: el carro (the car); la bicicleta (the bicycle) Examples: los carros (the cars); las bicicletas (the bicycles)
• “It” is translated as él (not el) when referring to masculine nouns and ella when referring to feminine nouns. Example: Él es verde. (It is green, referring to a car) Example: Ella es verde. (It is green, referring to a bicycle)

  Fun fact: él and ella are also the words for “he” and “she”

  Other pronouns also change based on gender (more on that in Lesson 1.3).

• Adjectives often change their form to match the noun they modify (more on that in Lesson 1.4). Examples: un carro rojo (a red car); una bicicleta roja (a red bicycle)

  Spanish adjectives typically come after the noun they modify, unlike in English, which is why it’s bicicleta roja instead of “roja bicicleta.”

It’s worth pointing out you have the option to use forms of “a” for plural nouns in Spanish, unlike English. Those forms are unos (masculine) and unas (feminine), and they roughly translate to “some” as in “I ate some apples.”

Back to gender: funnily enough, some nouns have totally counterintuitive genders.

Spanish speakers will still understand you if you mess up a noun’s gender, but they’ll think you sound strange. That’s why, when you’re learning a noun on the Word Drills page, it’s worth noticing its gender, displayed as (m) or (f) beside the noun, and trying to memorize it along with the word. If you use any language resources other than Tongue of Fire, you can tell a noun’s gender there by seeing if it’s paired with un/el or una/la. It may be confusing now, but as you learn and use more and more nouns, learning genders will become second-nature.

If you ever forget a noun’s gender, you can remember that almost all nouns that end in O are masculine, while almost all nouns that end in A are feminine. There are exceptions, but the vast majority of nouns that end in O or A obey that pattern, so it’s fairly safe to assume its gender based on its ending.

And that’s all you need to know about noun gender! Now you’re prepared to learn, understand, and use the gender of any noun you’ll encounter.