How do you know when a word is masculine or feminine?

All Spanish nouns are either masculine or feminine - remember nouns are all things, ideas, places, or people. You cannot predict the gender of a noun in English, for example the Spanish word for "dress" you might guess is feminine, but its not! The first way to know if a word is feminine or masculine is to look at its definitive article - el or la. El is masculine and la is feminine. But what about when you don't know the article? El chico - the boy La chica - the girlThe second way is to look at the ending of the word. Most nouns that end in 'o' are masculine, and most that end in 'a' are feminine - but this is not the rule for every word! There are some words which end in 'a' that are masculine (el mapa, el problema, el día, el planeta, el poema...) And a few words that end in 'o' are feminine (la radio, la mano...) Many masculine nouns that end in a consonant also have a female version that end in 'a'.el profesor - the teacherla profesora - the female teacher And some nouns that refer to people use the same word for both masculine and feminine.el estudiante - the student la estudiante - the female student Nouns that end in -sión, -ción, -dad, -tad, -tud, -umbre are feminine.La televisiónLa libertad La universidad These rules can help you know whether a noun is masculine or feminine. Remember when you are learning new vocabulary, to learn it full with the definite article (el/la).