The Rules for the Gender of Nouns in Spanish - Spanish Learning Lab (2024)

Spanish nouns normally have either a feminine or a masculine form. This interesting feature makes them kind of different and challenging at the same time when compared to the way nouns are used in other languages. Luckily, there are some simple rules to recognize masculine and feminine nouns in Spanish, and we are certain that you will remember them easily with all the examples in this lesson. Let’s start…

The basic rules for the gender of Spanish nouns

As a general rule, we recognize the gender of nouns in Spanishby looking attheword’s ending. Masculine wordsusually end in the vowels Eor Olike PADREand MAESTRO, whereas femininewordsend in the vowel Asuch as HERMANAand CASA. The picture belowintroduces some examples of common masculine and feminine nouns in Spanish.

Recognizing masculinenouns in Spanish: list and examples

You will recognize masculine nouns in Spanish, los sustantivos masculinos, because these words end in the letters -N, -O, -R, -S, -R, –L.Two examples of common masculine nouns are CORAZÓN (heart) and CARRO (car). In addition, just a few masculine nouns end in the syllables –MA, -PA and –TA, just like the word PROBLEMA and MAPA, as shown in these sentences:

• El pastel está delicioso. (The cake is delicious.)
• El dinosaurio se comió a la vaca. (The dinosaur ate the cow.)
• ¿Puedes revisar el mapa por favor? (Can you check the map, please?)

Not all the words ending in those syllables are actually masculine nouns, e.g. “CAPA” (cape) or “TAPA” (lid). In addition,there are some feminine nouns in Spanish that may end in -L and -MA such as: CÁRCEL (jail)and MAMÁ (mom).

There are always exceptions to the rules for the gender of nouns, so pay attention to certain clues like thedefinite articleorindefinite articlethat precedes the word,or even the subject pronoun that is being used in the sentence, for example:

• Él es mi papá (the pronoun “ÉL” tells thatwe are talking about a masculinenoun)
• Ayúdame a pelar las papas. (Help me to peel the potatoes – PAPA with no tilde means potato, and it becomes a feminine noun)

In general, you will not see or listen to isolatedwords in the language,so the rest of the words in the sentence and their spelling will be crucial to determine the gender of nouns in Spanish.

Some examples of sentences using a list of masculinenouns in Spanish

Identifying feminine nouns in Spanish: list and examples

“Los sustantivos femeninos” or feminine nouns usually end in the letters-A, -DAD, -TAD, -ED, -SION, -CIÓN, -DEZ, -TIS, -IZ and some end in -E too. Again, these endings are not absolute, so you may still find a few masculine nouns in Spanish ending in those letters as well.

Sentencesusing a list of feminine nouns in Spanish

Wrapping up!

Keep in mind that some words can change from masculine to feminine, and vice versa, e.g. Doctor -> Doctora or Niño->Niña. Some nouns are always masculine, like “Virus“, whereas others are always feminine, like “Mamá“. The ability to identify whether one belongs to one group or the other comes from real practice, through reading or speaking the language a bit often. Identifying the gender of nouns in Spanish is not an easy task, but practice makes perfect. Here is a nice image illustrating common Spanish words and their gender:

Confusing Spanish nouns (invariant gender)

Finally, some nouns could be treated asmasculine and feminine nouns.They are usually called SUSTANTIVOS INVARIABLES. The article or pronoun thatis placedbefore them help us determine their gender and meaning.Some of them change their meaning depending on the article they are used with. For example, the noun CURA seems to be a feminine noun, but whenadd the article EL and say “El cura” then it becomes a priest, but if we add the feminine article LA then it becomes “La cura” (thecure). You can learn more with this video, which explains how a slight change in articles affects the meaning of words.

Sentencesusing Spanish invariant nouns

Related Spanish Worksheets:

• Classifying Nouns in Spanish – PDF Worksheet
• Singular and Plural Nouns in Spanish – PDF Worksheet
• Spanish Nouns Gender and Number – PDF Worksheet
• Subject Pronouns in Spanish – PDF Worksheet