Grammatical gender in Spanish

Every noun in Spanish is considered to have either masculine or feminine gender for grammatical purposes.

Many Spanish adjectives and determiners alter their form to agree in gender with the nouns that they modify, and likewise many pronouns show gender agreement with their antecedent nouns. There is no neuter gender for Spanish nouns, but some pronouns are considered to have neuter gender. A few nouns are said to be of "ambiguous" gender, meaning that they are sometimes treated as masculine and sometimes as feminine.[1]

Additionally, the terms "common gender" and "epicene gender" are used to classify ways in which grammatical gender interacts (or not) with "natural gender" (the sex of a person or animal).

Grammatical gender in Spanish must not be equated with sex, although most nouns referring to male persons are grammatically masculine, and most referring to females are feminine. Exceptionally, persona ('person') and víctima ('victim') are always feminine, even when they refer to a male. When referring to non-living objects, there is in most cases no more "sense" to noun genders in Spanish than there is in other gendered languages. The gender of a Spanish noun is in most cases an arbitrary fact about it which must be memorized.

The role of gender in Spanish is treated in great detail (in Spanish) in the newest grammar of the Real Academia Española (Nueva gramática de la lengua española, Madrid, Espasa, 2009, pp. 5–43), and that section happens to be made accessible as an on-line sample of the larger work.

See also

References

  1. E-spanish | Gender of Spanish nouns. E-spanyol.hu. Retrieved on 2011-01-22.
  2. Spanish Nouns of Ambiguous Gender — Spanish Grammar. Spanish.about.com (2010-06-17). Retrieved on 2011-01-22.
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