How do I know if a noun is masculine or feminine?
A crash course in noun gender...
Spanish is very kind in that it's usually easy to work out whether a noun is masculine or feminine.
If it ends in an O it is masculine.
If it ends in an A it is feminine.
E.g. Mundo (world), Trabajo (job), Perro (dog) are all masculine, and Casa (house), Palabra (word), Hora (hour) are all feminine.
We use the article El for a masculine noun, and La for a feminine noun. (this is why, when you learn a new noun, you should always write the article next to it - e.g. write 'la casa' not just 'casa'.)
If a word ends in another letter, for example Mujer (woman) or País (country), it could be either.
There are lots of patterns to look out for - e.g. nouns ending in 'ión' like Opinión (opinion) and Construcción (building/construction) tend to be feminine.
Sometimes you can work out whether it's masculine or feminine from what it is e.g. Hombre (man) is a masculine noun.
Here are a few examples:
Questión (question) = feminine
Madre (mother) = feminine
Ciudad (city) = feminine
Aire (air) = masculine
Arte (art) = masculine
País (country) = masculine
There are, of course, some irregulars, where the noun ends in an O but is feminine, or ends in an A but is masculine:
La mano (hand) = feminine
El programa (programme) = masculine
El día (day) = masculine
El problema (problem) = Masculine
Some nouns can take either an O or an A at the end to mean either, for example Niño (child) can be Niño for a boy or Niña for a girl.
