Singular Nouns and their Articles
Remember in elementary school you learned about nouns? Nouns are classified as parts of speech, and depict a person, place or thing. It's pretty straight forward, except in Spanish we have to add one important nugget of information to the noun. We must add its gender.
The gender of a noun is important in the Spanish language, and yes, when we're referring to the gender, we're referring to whether the noun is a "boy" or "girl". Actually, in more technical terms, we're distinguishing between whether the noun is "masculine" or "feminine". All nouns in English have a neutral gender, but in Spanish, no nouns are neutral.
So, I recommend when learning every noun that you also the learn the definite article associated with the noun. The definite article will depict the gender of the noun, and will be especially important in your studies in the future. The definite articles are as follows. For masculine nouns, the definite article is el, and for feminine nouns the definite article is la. These articles apply only to singular nouns.
The noun for book is libro, but like I said, let's learn this noun along with its definite article.
el libro the book
la casa the house
Therefore, the noun book is a masculine noun and the noun casa is feminine. One must memorize these definite articles el and la.
Now, for the most part, nouns ending in -o are masculine and those ending in -a are feminine. Also, most nouns that end in –ión (conversión) and –dad (universidad) are feminine. Also, nouns that are male in nature carry a masculine article (el hombre the man), and nouns that represent females are feminine (la mujer the woman).
Here are some special cases:
el tema the theme
la mano the hand
el día the day
You must also deal with ambiguity in nouns and article. Some nouns are ambiguous, as far as their gender is concerned, meaning that simply left by themselves some nouns are either masculine or feminine when lacking a defining article. We must then add meaning by using context. This can be done using an article.
Nouns that end in the suffix –ante can either be masculine or feminine, which we clarify by adding the gender to the article. For example,
el estudiante the student(masculine)
If the student is feminine, however, we add the definite feminine article la:
la estudiante the student(female)
Other nouns that are like this are:
el cantante (singer, male)
la cantante (singer, female)
and
el amante (lover, male)
la amante (lover, female)
As we see, the article of the noun explains to us what the gender is. Other ambiguous nouns can be made feminine by adding an –a on the end of it, or simply replacing the –e with an –a to “soften” the noun. Check out the following table:
Masculine Feminine Meaning
el autor la autora author
el doctor la doctora doctor
el profesor la profesora professor
el comerciante la comerciante merchant
el jefe la jefa boss
el francés la francesa French person
el español la española Spaniard
el presidente la presidenta president
el pariente la parienta relative
el sirviente la sirvienta servant
Nouns that end in –ista normally don’t change their suffix, irregardless of the gender of the noun. This suffix is equivalent to the English -ist:
el periodista (journalist, male)
la periodista (journalist, female)
el dentista (dentist, male)
la dentista (dentist, female)
el artista (artist, male)
la artista (artist, female)
It’s important during the course of your studies that you memorize every noun with the correct definite article, as this will prove its importance in the future.
You might be wondering (hopefully you are!) how you can determine a nouns gender if the noun doesn’t fall cleanly into a masculine/feminine ending. The best way to determine a nouns gender is by looking it up in a Spanish-English dictionary. For example, let’s pretend we want to know the Spanish word for milk. You will find in the dictionary:
milk leche f.
Notice the “f” in italics next to the word leche. This stands for feminine. How about the word for dessert?
dessert postre m.
The “m” in italics is an abbreviation for “masculine”. Finally, if you look up the word for “smuggler” (well, you could!) you will find
smuggler contrabandista m., f.
This time, you will notice you stumbled upon a noun that can either be male or female, depending on whether or not the smuggler is a, well, male or female. If you haven’t yet purchased one, go and buy a Spanish-English dictionary. They will come in handy later on.
¡Sigue estudiando!
Professor Joel
The gender of a noun is important in the Spanish language, and yes, when we're referring to the gender, we're referring to whether the noun is a "boy" or "girl". Actually, in more technical terms, we're distinguishing between whether the noun is "masculine" or "feminine". All nouns in English have a neutral gender, but in Spanish, no nouns are neutral.
So, I recommend when learning every noun that you also the learn the definite article associated with the noun. The definite article will depict the gender of the noun, and will be especially important in your studies in the future. The definite articles are as follows. For masculine nouns, the definite article is el, and for feminine nouns the definite article is la. These articles apply only to singular nouns.
The noun for book is libro, but like I said, let's learn this noun along with its definite article.
Therefore, the noun book is a masculine noun and the noun casa is feminine. One must memorize these definite articles el and la.
Now, for the most part, nouns ending in -o are masculine and those ending in -a are feminine. Also, most nouns that end in –ión (conversión) and –dad (universidad) are feminine. Also, nouns that are male in nature carry a masculine article (el hombre the man), and nouns that represent females are feminine (la mujer the woman).
Here are some special cases:
You must also deal with ambiguity in nouns and article. Some nouns are ambiguous, as far as their gender is concerned, meaning that simply left by themselves some nouns are either masculine or feminine when lacking a defining article. We must then add meaning by using context. This can be done using an article.
Nouns that end in the suffix –ante can either be masculine or feminine, which we clarify by adding the gender to the article. For example,
If the student is feminine, however, we add the definite feminine article la:
Other nouns that are like this are:
and
As we see, the article of the noun explains to us what the gender is. Other ambiguous nouns can be made feminine by adding an –a on the end of it, or simply replacing the –e with an –a to “soften” the noun. Check out the following table:
Masculine Feminine Meaning
el autor la autora author
el doctor la doctora doctor
el profesor la profesora professor
el comerciante la comerciante merchant
el jefe la jefa boss
el francés la francesa French person
el español la española Spaniard
el presidente la presidenta president
el pariente la parienta relative
el sirviente la sirvienta servant
Nouns that end in –ista normally don’t change their suffix, irregardless of the gender of the noun. This suffix is equivalent to the English -ist:
It’s important during the course of your studies that you memorize every noun with the correct definite article, as this will prove its importance in the future.
You might be wondering (hopefully you are!) how you can determine a nouns gender if the noun doesn’t fall cleanly into a masculine/feminine ending. The best way to determine a nouns gender is by looking it up in a Spanish-English dictionary. For example, let’s pretend we want to know the Spanish word for milk. You will find in the dictionary:
Notice the “f” in italics next to the word leche. This stands for feminine. How about the word for dessert?
The “m” in italics is an abbreviation for “masculine”. Finally, if you look up the word for “smuggler” (well, you could!) you will find
This time, you will notice you stumbled upon a noun that can either be male or female, depending on whether or not the smuggler is a, well, male or female. If you haven’t yet purchased one, go and buy a Spanish-English dictionary. They will come in handy later on.
¡Sigue estudiando!
Professor Joel
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