Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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]
For example, la boutique 'boutique' is a borrowing from French, in which it is also feminine. Further, its meaning is similar to more established Spanish noun la tienda 'shop', which is also feminine. La app 'app (in computing)' is a borrowing from English, which lacks a robust system of grammatical gender.
the. MASC. SG abuelo grandfather el abuelo the.MASC.SG grandfather "the grandfather" Feminine la the. FEM. SG abuela grandmother la abuela the.FEM.SG grandmother "the grandmother" In "grammatical" gender, most words that end in -a and -d are marked with "feminine" articles. Example of grammatical gender in Spanish "Grammatical" gender Number Phrase Masculine Singular el the. MASC. SG plato ...
Furthermore, some see evidence of the intentional preference of the masculine over the feminine. It has been argued that 17th-century grammaticians who wanted to assert male dominance worked to suppress the feminine forms of certain professions, leading to the modern-day rule that prefers the masculine over the feminine in the French language. [4]
For example, in Spanish, the masculine gender generally precedes the feminine, and the default form of address for a group of students is the masculine plural los estudiantes, regardless of the gender composition of the group. On the other hand, the feminine plural las estudiantes refers to a group consisting only of female students. [2]
Nouns and most pronouns are inflected for number (singular or plural, though in most nouns the plural is pronounced the same as the singular even if spelled differently); adjectives, for number and gender (masculine or feminine) of their nouns; personal pronouns and a few other pronouns, for person, number, gender, and case; and verbs, for ...
French personal pronouns (analogous to English I, you, he/she, we, and they) reflect the person and number of their referent, and in the case of the third person, its gender as well (much like the English distinction between him and her, except that French lacks an inanimate third person pronoun it or a gender neutral they and thus draws this distinction among all third person nouns, singular ...
The French terminations -ois / ais serve as both the singular and plural masculine; adding 'e' (-oise / aise) makes them singular feminine; 'es' (-oises / aises) makes them plural feminine. The Spanish termination "-o" usually denotes the masculine and is normally changed to feminine by dropping the "-o" and adding "-a". The plural forms are ...