All Spanish words have gender. What does it mean to have gender in language? Why are some words called masculine and others feminine? Does gender have anything to do with the meaning of the word itself? The answer to that is "not usually."
| El libro/un libro [the book/a book] is masculine because it ends in o and uses the articles el and un. It has nothing to do with whether books are read or written by men. |
| La policía [the police force] is a feminine word but that doesn't mean that it is run or staffed by women, or is a feminine profession. |
However, words that identify people must agree with the gender of the person being described. For example, the word for “child” (boy) is niño and the word for child (girl) is niña. The same occurs for the words for male and female teenagers, muchachos and muchachas.
Category 1 (masculine)
Category 2 (Feminine)
There are rules for
most gender determinations. Here are a few:
Examples:
la pizarra, la lección, la libertad, la verdad, la virtud, la muchedumbre, la presencia