Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A typeset reference sheet for the first-year student of the Spanish language. Created based upon out-of-copyright public domain sources. Made using Scribus. Date: 13 July 2006: Source: Own work: Author: Struthious Bandersnatch: Permission (Reusing this file)
In Spanish, nouns not belonging to the class described above form another class of noun. [1] The gender of nouns in this other class are arbitrarily assigned. However, some general patterns help to predict the gender of nouns. [11] Notably, the endings of nouns give clues to their genders. For instance, nouns ending in -o are usually masculine.
Every Spanish noun has a specific gender, either masculine or feminine, in the context of a sentence. Generally, nouns referring to males or male animals are masculine, while those referring to females are feminine. [1] [2] In terms of importance, the masculine gender is the default or unmarked, while the feminine gender is marked or distinct. [2]
In -er verbs (and some -ir verbs, like disminuir) whose stem ends with a vowel, the i of the -iendo ending is replaced by y: e.g. leer, traer, creer → leyendo, trayendo, creyendo. In -ir verbs whose stem ends with e —such as reír and sonreír —the stem vowel e is raised to i (as is typical of -ir verbs), and this i merges with the i of ...
The usually-masculine form el is used instead of la before feminine nouns that begin with a stressed a (or rarely, au) sound (as well as, in principle, ai although such words are almost never found in practice): el águila (pequeña) = "the (small) eagle" el agua (fresca) = "the (fresh) water" el hacha (afilada) = "the (sharp) axe"
Gender may also be predictable from the type of derivation: for instance, the verbal nouns of Stem II (e.g. التفعيل al-tafʿīl, from فعّل، يفعّل faʿʿala, yufaʿʿil) are always masculine. In French, nouns ending in -e tend to be feminine, whereas others tend to be masculine, but there are many exceptions to this (e.g. cadre ...
Some masculine nouns can take two diminutive suffixes, -[a]k and -ić; in those cases, -k-becomes palatalized before -i to produce an ending -čić: sin (son) → sinčić (also sinak or sinek) momak (boy, bachelor, itself of diminutive origin) → momče, momčić; Neuter: pero (feather) → perce; jezero (lake) → jezerce; sunce (sun) → ...
If the masculine version ends with a consonant, the feminine is typically formed by adding an -a to it as well: el doctor, la doctora. However, not all nouns ending in -o are masculine, and not all nouns ending in -a are feminine: Singular nouns ending in -o or -a are epicene (invariable) in some cases: testigo (witness, any gender).