How To Use The Masculine And Feminine Nouns Correctly In Spanish?

English speakers, usually, face a big problem when they must use the Spanish nouns properly and distinguish them between masculine and feminine gender. In this article, I will try to give you some ideas to tackle this problem and not to die in the attempt!!

Generally speaking for masculine gender we have these nouns:

• it ends with -o: el libro
• it ends with -or: el amor
• it ends with-aje: el viaje

Of course, there are some exceptions, which despite finishing with -o they are femenine: la mano, la foto, la radio, la flor....

For femenine gender we have these nouns:

• it ends with -a: la mesa
• it ends with -dad, -tad: la actividad, la libertad
• it ends with -si n, -ci n: la ilusi n, la lecci n

We have some exceptions (again, yes!! this is the tricky part of Spanish), they finish with -a and they are considered masculine: el d a, el mapa, el problema, el planeta, el sof ...
ADVICE FOR EVERYONE!!!! When you look up any word in a Spanish dictionary you will see the gender indicated at the beginning of the word.
E.g: mesa. Del lat n mensa1. f. Mueble compuesto de un tablero horizontal liso y sostenido........

I hope this is useful for you and your Spanish lessons.