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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]
[5] [6] For this class of nouns, the masculine and feminine often take different forms. By convention, the masculine form is treated as the lemma (that is, the form listed in dictionaries) and the feminine form as the marked form. [7] For nouns of this class with the masculine form ending in -o, the feminine form typically replaces the -o with -a.
In Spanish, as in other Romance languages, all nouns belong to one of two genders, "masculine" or "feminine", and many adjectives change their form to agree in gender with the noun they modify. For most nouns that refer to persons, grammatical gender matches biological gender.
In languages with only masculine and feminine genders, the dummy pronoun may be the masculine third person singular, as in the French for "it's raining": il pleut (where il means "he", or "it" when referring to masculine nouns); although some languages use the feminine, as in the equivalent Welsh sentence: mae hi'n bwrw glaw (where the dummy ...
Note: The Slavic languages marked with an asterisk (*) were traditionally recognised as having masculine, feminine and neuter genders only, with animacy as a separate category for the masculine and feminine (in East Slavic languages) or masculine only (elsewhere). Other. Ket [11] Khoekhoe ; Telugu ; Teso (Nilo-Saharan)
Some Spanish-speaking people advocate for the use of the pronouns elle (singular) and elles (plural). [14] Spanish often uses -a and -o for gender agreement in adjectives corresponding with feminine and masculine nouns, respectively; in order to agree with a gender neutral or non-binary noun, it is suggested to use the suffix -e.
La is used, however, when el would imply a masculine noun: la ácrata (because el ácrata would be a male anarchist) la árabe (because el árabe would be a male Arab, or the Arabic language) Feminine el is never used, however, before feminine adjectives that begin with a stressed a: la alta montaña = "the high mountain" la ancha calle = "the ...
A very small number of nouns in some languages can be either masculine or feminine. [53] [54] When referring to these mixed-gender nouns, a decision has to be made, based on factors such as meaning, dialect or sometimes even personal preference, whether to use a masculine or feminine pronoun. There are no neutral or mixed-gender singular third ...