Gender of Nouns: El aeropuerto, la playa (00)

Spanish nouns are either masculine or feminine.

Masculine nouns usually end in -o.

See how the definite article el is used with the noun aeropuerto. We can use the indefinite article un as well.

Many masculine nouns don´t end in -o. We have to memorise them with their article. Here we have a table with five examples.

Some masculine nouns also can end in -a or -ma .

Feminine nouns usually end in -a

Notice the use of the definite article la with the noun playa. We could use also the indefinite article una as well.

Many feminine nouns don not end also in -a. We have to learn them with their article. You can see some examples in the following table.

Nouns ending in -ión, - sión, -dad, -tad, -tud are feminine. See the table below.

Summary

• words ending in -o are mostly masculine (el aeropuerto, el amigo, el vino,...)
• masculine nouns use articles el, un (el aeropurto, un aeropuerto)
• words ending in -a are mostly feminine (la tienda, la casa, la puerta,...)
• with feminine nouns we use articles la , una (la playa, una playa)