Notes on gender and number (SPAN 2312-Fall 2018) PDF

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GENDER: Masculine vs. Feminine The words el and la, both of which mean ‘the’ in English, are called definite articles. Textbook publishers use these articles as a tool to help students remember one vital piece of information: all Spanish nouns (not just those referring to animate beings such as hombre ‘man’ or mujer ‘woman’) are assigned gender. In other words, Spanish nouns are either feminine or masculine.1 This may sound strange to you because in English almost everything non-human is referred to as “it.” In Spanish, however, concrete things such as “library” and even concepts such as “love” must be either masculine or feminine. A library, for instance, is feminine, whereas love is masculine. Therefore, from now on, you should get used to doing the following: When looking up a Spanish noun in your bilingual dictionary, try to memorize its meaning and its gender. Let’s pretend you’re looking up “library” in a bilingual dictionary. You will find that its Spanish translation is biblioteca. Before closing the dictionary, however, make an effort to memorize the gender of the noun. Dictionaries typically use the abbreviations “m.” or “masc.” to indicate that the noun is masculine and “f.” or “fem.” to tell students that the noun in question is feminine. In this case, the entry for “library” might look like this: Library: Biblioteca (fem.) Here are two examples that show why memorizing the gender of nouns is so crucial in Spanish: “La silla roja” “El libro rojo”

The red chair The red book

These phrases show that certain words surrounding Spanish nouns will change their appearance according to the gender of the noun. The noun silla ‘chair’ is feminine in Spanish, whereas the noun libro ‘book’ is masculine. This gender difference must be reflected in the way the definite article “the” and the adjective “red” are spelled. As a general rule, nouns ending in –a tend to be feminine, whereas nouns ending in –o are masculine. Here are some examples:

El bibliotecario: ‘the male librarian’ El edificio: ‘the building’

La bibliotecaria: ‘the female librarian’ La oficina: ‘the office’

These rules are general rules. In fact, here are some exceptions involving some commonly-used nouns:

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To be precise, a small number of Spanish nouns can be masculine AND feminine. For instance the same noun artista ‘artist’ could refer to either a male artist or a female one. Only context will determine the specific gender of these nouns.

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(1) Masculine nouns which nonetheless end in –a. Because they are masculine, you will see the masculine definite article el accompanying these nouns: a. El día ‘The day’ b. El problema ‘The problem’ c. El programa ‘The program’ (2) Feminine nouns which nonetheless end in –o. Because they are feminine, you will see the masculine definite article la accompanying these nouns: a. La mano ‘The hand’ b. La foto ‘The photograph’

So, what if the noun does not end in either –o or –a? In other words, how can we possibly know whether nouns such as administración are masculine or feminine? The answer is that with these nouns we can’t tell by just looking at the last letter! It’s true that we could come up with some tendencies involving these nouns (for instance, nouns referring to male or female people will be masculine or feminine, respectively), but other than that, you are supposed to look the gender up! So, if you consulted your bilingual dictionary, the entry for ‘administration’ might look like this: Administration: Administración (fem.)

Before we move on to the next point, please complete the following activity (you will find the answer key immediately below the activity).

Use the appropriate definite article (el or la) with these nouns: MODELO: ________ biblioteca  La biblioteca (1) ________ día ‘day’

(6) ________ computadora ‘computer’

(2) ________ problema ‘problem’

(7) ________ literatura ‘Literature’

(3) ________ programa ‘program’

(8) ________ hombre ‘man’

(4) ________ profesora ‘female teacher’

(9) ________ mujer ‘woman’

(5) ________ mano

(10) ________ secretario ‘male secretary’

‘hand’

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ANSWER KEY: (1) El día. The noun día ends in –a, but it’s masculine because it’s one of the exceptions to the general rule (see previous page). (2) El problema. The noun problema ends in –a, but it’s masculine because it’s one of the exceptions to the rule. (3) El programa. The noun programa ends in –a, but it’s masculine because it’s one of the exceptions to the rule. (4) La profesora. The noun profesora ends in –a and is not one of the exceptions to the rule. Also, the word refers to a female person. (5) La mano. The noun mano ends in –o, but it’s feminine because it’s one of the exceptions to the rule. (6) La computadora. The noun computadora ends in –a, and is not one of the exceptions to the rule. (7) La literatura. The noun literatura ends in –a, and is not one of the exceptions to the rule. (8) El hombre. This noun does not end in either –o or a. So, in principle, we would have to look its gender up in a dictionary. However, because the noun refers to a male person, we can confidently predict that it’s masculine. (9) La mujer. This noun does not end in either –o or a. However, because it refers to a female person, we can confidently predict that it’s feminine. (10) El secretario. This noun ends in–o and is not among the exceptions listed at the top of the previous page. Also, the word refers to a male person.

Indefinite articles also display this relationship with nouns. Indefinite articles, such as ‘a(n)’ in English, refer to a noun in an undetermined way. For instance, if I said ‘I read a book today,’ I am not being very specific about the author of the book, its plot, etc. The Spanish equivalent of ‘a’ is un or una. By now you probably have guessed correctly that un accompanies masculine nouns, whereas una appears next to feminine ones. Un libro vs. Una biblioteca

Un hombre vs. Una mujer

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NUMBER: Singular vs. Plural The English language has different ways of marking plurality. For instance, nouns such as ‘chair’ add an –s (‘one chair’  ‘two chairs’); other nouns, such as ‘woman’ change one of their vowels (‘one woman’  ‘two women’); and so on. Like English, Spanish has different ways to indicate that the noun is referring to more than one thing, concept, or being. These are the general rules governing the two most common plurality markers: -s and –es. (1) Add –s when the singular noun ends in a vowel. For instance, (a) libro  libros (b) biblioteca  bibliotecas (2) Add –es when the singular noun ends in a consonant. For example, (a) mujer  mujeres (b) español (‘Spanish man’) españoles (c) If the final consonant is a –z, then replace that consonant with a –c and apply rule (2). In other words, -z  -ces. a. lápiz ‘pencil’  lápices At this point, you may be wondering, “if choosing between the definite articles el and la depends on whether the noun is masculine or feminine, do these articles change depending on whether the noun is singular or plural?” The answer is: “Yes, they do.” In fact, this is one of the most common sources of grammatical mistakes for students of Spanish: failing to make sure that definite articles and adjectives in a sentence match the gender and number of the nouns they accompany. We will deal with adjectives later in the semester. In the case of the Spanish definite article, there are four possible combinations depending on the gender and number of its noun. In other words, there are four possible ways of saying ‘the’ in Spanish: (1) Masculine, singular: el (2) Feminine, singular: la

(3) Masculine, plural: los (4) Feminine, plural: las

So, can you fill in the appropriate article? _______ libros

_______ mujeres

_______ bibliotecas

_______ españoles

You should now be able to complete this brief activity. First, notice that all the nouns are plural. That should rule out the articles el and la because these are singular, thus reducing the number of possible contenders to two: los and las. The difference between these two plural articles is one of gender: los goes with masculine, plural nouns; las, however, must accompany feminine, plural ones.

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Now remember the rules governing gender assignment. The first noun, libros, is masculine because its singular form ends in –o. Therefore, the correct answer is los libros. The second noun, mujeres is feminine because although its singular form ends in a consonant, this noun refers to a female person. Thus, the correct answer is las mujeres. The third noun, bibliotecas, is feminine because its singular form ends in –a (and is not one of those exceptions that we covered previously). Therefore, the correct answer is las bibliotecas. Finally, the noun españoles is masculine because although its singular form ends in a consonant, this noun refers to a male person. Hence, the correct answer los españoles.

Indefinite articles (un / una) are also affected when the noun they go with is plural. Unos libros ‘some books’

vs. Unas bibliotecas ‘some libraries’

We’ll stop here for now. . .

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