Friday 12 August 2011

Men are from Madrid. Women are from Valencia

Or should that be Mars and Venus?
Whatever the case, one of the big stumbling blocks for new Spanish students is the idea of Gender.
How, exactly, do you remember whether a specific object is 'el' or 'la' ?
What about new words?

Often, hearing someone else using a word doesn't help. They might say 'voy a recoger mi traje' (I'm going to collect my suit) but that doesn't tell you whether the suit is masculine or feminine (it's 'el traje' by the way)

Well, there are some guidelines that can help. I'm not going to call them Rules because, to be honest, there are a lot of exceptions, but they can help.

First, good news Guys. U is N O R MA L
It might not look much, but this is a quick way to determine which objects are masculine (el, un) based on the last letter (or two). So, we get EL impetU (impetus),EL cinturóN (belt), EL gatO (cat), EL prograMA (program), and so  on.

Sorry, I couldn't come up with a handy mnemonic for the feminine nouns, but here's a list of endings for objects which are normally LA, or UNA.
a,d,cíon,síon,umbre,sis. So LA tapA (lid), LA ciudaD (city), LA naCION (nation), LA incertidUMBRE (uncertainty) etc.

Note: don't confuse masculine words, ending in MA, with feminine words ending in A. The MA ending usually indicates a word which has been 'imported' from Greek. There is, however, one notable exception - LA caMA (bed).

Well I did say these were not hard and fast rules!
Hopefully, though, you will still find them useful.

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