Gender Bender

Ah!..Gender in Spanish!!

The first thing to remember is that in Spanish almost everything has either a masculine or feminine gender. There is no neuter gender.

Also depending on the gender of the subject the entire sentence has to change.The basic rule is that masculine nouns go with masculine adjectives and articles, and feminine nouns go with feminine adjectives and articles.And if you use a pronoun to refer to a masculine noun, you use a masculine pronoun; feminine pronouns refer to feminine nouns.

Confused already??..Its only the start!!

BASIC RULE
Nouns and adjectives that end in -o (or -os for plural adjectives) generally are masculine, and nouns and adjectives that end in -a (or -as for plural adjectives) generally are feminine.

For eg.

• the man: el hombre (masculine article, masculine noun)
• the woman: la mujer (feminine article, feminine noun)
• a man: un hombre (masculine article, masculine noun)
• a woman: una mujer (feminine article, feminine noun)
• the men: los hombres (masculine article, masculine noun)
• the women: las mujeres (feminine article, feminine noun)
• the fat man: el hombre gordo (masculine adjective, masculine noun)
• the fat woman: la mujer gorda (feminine adjective, feminine noun)
• some men: unos hombres (masculine determiner, masculine noun)
• some women: unas mujeres (feminine determiner, feminine noun)
• He is fat: Él es gordo. (masculine pronoun, masculine adjective)
• She is fat: Ella es gorda. (feminine pronoun, feminine adjective)

So as you can see, the articles, adjectives and pronouns all change with the gender of the subject.