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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, a diminutive form of el coche 'car' is el cochecito 'baby carriage' while the diminutive form of el carro 'car' formed from the same suffix is el carrito 'shopping cart'. Some Spanish nouns can take a large number of affective suffixes, creating words with subtle differences in meaning or connotation.
Activists against sexism in language are also concerned about words whose feminine form has a different (usually less prestigious) meaning: An ambiguous case is "secretary": a secretaria is an attendant for her boss or a typist, usually female, while a secretario is a high-rank position—as in secretario general del partido comunista, "secretary general of the communist party"—usually held ...
For example, in Portuguese and Spanish, nouns that end in -o are mostly masculine, whereas those that end in -a are mostly feminine, regardless of their meaning. Nouns that end in some other vowel or a consonant are assigned a gender either according to etymology , by analogy, or by some other convention.
Orthographic solutions strive to include both the masculine and feminine endings in the word. Examples include hyphens (étudiant-e-s), middle dots (étudiant·e·s), [32] parentheses (étudiant(e)s), or capital letters (étudiantEs). The parentheses method is now often considered sexist, because parentheses are used to show something less ...
For example, taza (cup) is feminine, so "the red cup" is la taza roja, but vaso (glass) is masculine, so "the red glass" is el vaso rojo. In Spanish, it is perfectly normal to let an adjective stand in for a noun or pronoun—with (where people are involved) no implication of condescension or rudeness.
For example, a study found that women who were referred to as professoressa were seen as less persuasive than either a man or women who used the title professore (Italian for the feminine and masculine forms of "professor," respectively.") [8] Another reason feminized language may carry poor conceptions is because many efforts to feminize ...
Its a-is unstressed, but it usually takes el even when feminine. In addition, azúcar can be of both genders in Spanish (other words with double gender are sal (salt), mar (sea) and sartén (frying pan)): el azúcar refinada (el azúcar refinado and la azúcar refinada are also acceptable) Feminine el does not have the same origin as the ...