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Every Spanish noun has a specific gender, either masculine or feminine, in the context of a sentence. Generally, nouns referring to males or male animals are masculine, while those referring to females are feminine. [1] [2] In terms of importance, the masculine gender is the default or unmarked, while the feminine gender is marked or distinct. [2]
[5] [6] For this class of nouns, the masculine and feminine often take different forms. By convention, the masculine form is treated as the lemma (that is, the form listed in dictionaries) and the feminine form as the marked form. [7] For nouns of this class with the masculine form ending in -o, the feminine form typically replaces the -o with -a.
The French terminations -ois / ais serve as both the singular and plural masculine; adding 'e' (-oise / aise) makes them singular feminine; 'es' (-oises / aises) makes them plural feminine. The Spanish termination "-o" usually denotes the masculine and is normally changed to feminine by dropping the "-o" and adding "-a". The plural forms are ...
Usually, masculine nouns are unmarked, feminine nouns carry the suffix -a; and the plural is marked with the suffix -s, which makes the feminine ending turn into -e-. Thus, the most common declension paradigm for Catalan names is the one that follows:
Thus: el hombre = "[the] man"; los hombres = "[the] men"; la mujer = "[the] woman"; las mujeres = "[the] women"; The usually-masculine form el is used instead of la before feminine nouns that begin with a stressed a (or rarely, au) sound (as well as, in principle, ai although such words are almost never found in practice):
Here a masculine–feminine–neuter system previously existed, but the distinction between masculine and feminine genders has been lost in nouns (they have merged into what is called common gender), though not in pronouns that can operate under natural gender. Thus nouns denoting people are usually of common gender, whereas other nouns may be ...
Feminine nouns usually end in -a, sometimes -e: la casa (house), la xente (people), la nueche (night). Neuter nouns may have any ending. Asturian has three types of neuters: Masculine neuters have a masculine form and take a masculine article: el fierro vieyo (old iron). Feminine neuters have a feminine form and take a feminine article: la ...
Most adjectives, and a fair number of nouns, inflect for gender. This usually follows a regular pattern of endings. The two main patterns are generally referred to as "four-form" and "two-form" adjectives. Four-form adjectives have distinct masculine and feminine forms, whereas two-form adjectives have the same form for both masculine and feminine.