Spanish nouns

The Spanish language has nouns that express concrete objects, groups and classes of objects, qualities, feelings and other abstractions. All nouns have a conventional grammatical gender. Countable nouns inflect for number (singular and plural). However, the division between uncountable and countable nouns is more ambiguous than in English.

Gender

Spanish nouns belong to either the masculine or the feminine grammatical gender. Gender, in this case, refers to a grammatical system and is not necessarily connected with biological sex or gender. For example, la mesa 'table' is feminine despite there being nothing inherently feminine about tables. Adjectives and determiners agree in gender with their associated nouns. In a clause like las mesas grandes son más bonitas 'large tables are nicer', for instance, all adjectives and determiners associated with the head noun (mesas) must agree with it in gender. Mesas is feminine, so the article must be feminine too; thus, las is used instead of los. The two adjectives, whether next to the noun or after the verb, have to agree with the noun as well. Grande 'large' is invariable for gender, so it just takes a plural marker (grandes). Bonito 'nice' can be marked for both gender and number, so bonitas is used with mesas.

The question of whether -o, -a, and similar morphemes are inflectional gender morphemes is a matter of disagreement in grammars of Spanish. For terms like el hijo 'son' and la hija 'daughter', the terms seem to consist of a root like hij- and a suffix -o or-a that determines the noun's gender. But for terms like el escritor 'the (male) writer' and la escritora 'the (female) writer', only the feminine form seems to have an inflectional gender morpheme. Some grammars assume a null gender morpheme for the masculine forms of such terms (e.g., escritor-Ø/escritora) while others argue that such assumptions rely only on theoretical arguments and lack empirical grounds.

Gender of animate nouns

Though the gender of most Spanish nouns is assigned arbitrarily, the gender of nouns referring to humans and certain animals (a subtype of nouns called animate nouns) are determined by biological sex and gender. For animate 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. For animate nouns with the masculine form ending in -o, the feminine form typically replaces the -o with -a. For example, el abuelo 'grandfather' becomes la abuela 'grandmother'. Exceptionally, some animate nouns with the masculine form ending in -o lack a distinct feminine form. In these cases, the gender of the noun is marked only by the determiners or adjectives that agree with it. For instance, the feminine form of el soldado 'the (male) soldier' is la soldado 'the (female) soldier', with only the gender of the article (el/la) distinguishing them in this case. For animate nouns with the masculine form ending in -or, -ón, -ín, -és, and -án, the feminine form adds an -a. For example, el doctor 'the (male) doctor' becomes la doctora 'the (female) doctor'.

The remaining animate nouns do not typically have distinct feminine forms, but the gender of the determiners or adjectives that agree with them still correspond to biological sex or gender. For instance, el artista refers to an artist who is male while la artista refers to an artist who is female. These nouns are called common gender nouns.

For some animate nouns called heteronyms (heterónimos), the masculine and feminine forms are distinct lemmas. Much as English has the distinct lemmas bull and cow, for example, Spanish has the distinct forms el toro 'bull' and la vaca 'cow'. For these nouns, the masculine plural form is typically used for groups containing both male and female members. A group containing both actors (los actores) and actresses (las actrices), for instance, is referred to as los actores 'actors'. Exceptionally, an animal species may be represented by the feminine lemma rather than the masculine (much as the English goose can refer either to the species as a whole or specifically females of the species when contrasted with gander). For example, la vaca can refer to the species 'cattle' or the female of the species 'cow', but el toro refers only to the male of the species 'bull'.

Notably, not all nouns that refer to humans belong to the category of animate nouns; thus, not all nouns that refer to humans take different forms for the masculine and feminine. For example, la persona 'person' is not an animate nouns and is always feminine, regardless of the sex or gender of the person.

Gender of inanimate nouns

In Spanish, the gender of inanimate nouns are arbitrarily assigned. However, some general patterns help to predict the gender of nouns. Notably, the endings of nouns give clues to the their genders. For instance, nouns ending in -o are usually masculine. The exceptions are la dínamo 'dynamo' (also el dínamo in Latin America), la disco 'disco', la foto 'photo', la líbido 'libido', la magneto 'magneto' (also el magneto), la mano 'hand', la moto 'motorcycle', and la radio 'radio' (also el radio in Latin America). Words ending in -aje, -or, -án, -ambre or a stressed vowel are also typically masculine. The exceptions are la flor 'flower', el hambre 'hunger', la labor 'labor', and la pelambre 'patch of hair' (also el pelambre). Nouns ending in -men or -gen are also often masculine, but there are exceptions, such as la imagen 'image'. Finally, nouns that both end in -ma or -eta and are derived from Greek are typically masculine.

Many grammars of Spanish suggest that nouns ending in -a are feminine, but there is no requirement that Spanish nouns ending in -a be feminine. Thus, grammars that pose such a requirement also typically include a long list of exceptions, such as el alerta 'alert', el bocata 'sandwich', el caza 'figher plane', and many others. More reliable markers of feminine nouns are -ez, -eza, -ción, -ía, -sión, -dad, -tad, -tud, -umbre, -ie, -nza, -cia, -sis, and -itis. The exceptions for -ez are el ajedrez 'chess' and el pez 'fish', and the exceptions for -sis are el análisis 'analysis', el éxtasis 'ecstasy', el apocalipsis 'apocalypse', el paréntesis 'parenthesis', and el énfasis 'emphasis'.

Though the gender of inanimate nouns does not correspond to biological sex, it can mark other kinds of differences. For example, gender marks the difference between a tree (typically masculine) and its fruit (typically feminine). Thus, el almendro and el cerezo refer to 'almond tree' and 'cherry tree', respectively, while la almendra and la cerezo refer to 'almond' and 'cherry', respectively. In many cases, these patterns with specific nouns can be traced to a common hypernym. For example, el almendro and el cerezo are masculine because the hypernym el árbol 'tree' is masculine. The following table lists some of these patterns.

Class	Gen.	Example	Hyponym	Ref.
automobiles	m	un Mercedes	el automóvil
cardinal directions	m	el Sur	el punto cardinal
centuries	m	el XV	el siglo
colors	m	el azul	el color
companies	f	la Mercedes	la empresa
days	m	el lunes	el día
fruits	f	la cereza	la fruta
highways	f	la Nacional IV	la carretera
hours	f	las cuatro	las horas
islands	f	las Canarias	la isla
lakes	m	el Titicaca	el lago
languages	m	el ruso	el idioma
letters	f	la eme	la letra
months	m	el agosto	el mes
motorcycles	f	una Vespa	la motocicleta
mountains	m	los Alpes	el monte
numbers	m	el cuatro	el número
oceans	m	el Pacífico	el océano
rivers	m	el Amazonas	el río
seas	m	el Cantábrico	el/la mar
sports teams	m	el Peñarol	el equipo
trees	m	el cerezo	el árbol
years	m	el 1999	el año

The gender of inanimate nouns may also mark distinctions related to size and shape, such as the distinction between el cántaro 'pitcher' and la cántaro 'large pitcher'. Further, some polysemic nouns can be distinguished by their gender. For example, el margen (masculine) means 'margin' while la margen means 'river bank'. Similarly, el cura (masculine) means 'priest' while la cura means 'cure'.

Like all nouns in Spanish, borrowed nouns must also be masculine or feminine, even when the nouns are borrowed from languages that lack grammatical gender. In these cases, animate nouns behave as expected (taking their gender from the biological sex or gender of the referent), but there are no formal rules that determine the gender of borrowed inanimate nouns. Generally, a borrowed inanimate noun will be feminine if it resembles a more established feminine noun in form or meaning or, less reliably, if it is grammatically feminine in its language of origin. For example, la boutique 'boutique' is a borrowing from French, in which it is also feminine. Further, its meaning is similar to more established Spanish noun la tienda 'shop', which is also feminine. La app 'app (in computing)' is a borrowing from English, which lacks a robust system of grammatical gender. It is generally treated as feminine in Spanish because it is similar in form and meaning to la aplicación 'application', which is also feminine. Borrowed inanimate nouns that do not meet these criteria are typically treated as masculine. For example, el aftershave 'aftershave' cannot inherit a gender from its language of origin (English) and is not sufficiently similar to a more established Spanish noun, so it defaults to masculine.

Variation

The gender of some nouns in Spanish are subject to variation. It is rare that the same speakers use these nouns in both genders without difference in meaning; that is, speakers do not just pick a form at random, but rather, something about the speaker or the intended meaning leads one gender or the other to be preferred in a particular context. For example, mar 'sea' is typically masculine but may be feminine for those who work on or near the sea, especially in the context of that work. Similarly, radio 'radio' is feminine for many speakers in Spain but masculine for speakers in many parts of Latin America. Internet causes speakers to hesitate between making it masculine like other loanwords from English, or making it feminine to agree with red, 'net'. Meanwhile, azúcar 'sugar' can be masculine with el, feminine with la, or feminine with el (perhaps as a carry-over from Old Spanish, in which the singular definite article was invariably el before nouns beginning with a-, regardless of gender and regardless of stress). Arte 'art' is masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, though it can be feminine in the singular when it means 'art-form' and masculine in the plural in the expression los artes de pesca 'fishing gear'.

Vestiges of the neuter

While Spanish is generally regarded to have two genders, its ancestor, Latin, had three. The transition from three genders to two is mostly complete; however, vestiges of a neuter gender can still be seen. This was noted by Andrés Bello in his work on the grammar of Latin American Spanish.

Most notably, this is seen in pronouns like esto, eso, aquello, and ello, which are the neuter forms of este, ese, aquel, and él, respectively. These words correspond with English "this", "that", "that" (more common than aquello), and "it". Additionally the word lo, while usually masculine, can be considered neuter in some circumstances. It can also be used in the place of el to be a neutral form of the article "the", as in lo mismo, "the same". Bello also notes that words such as nada, poco, algo, and mucho can be used as neuters in some contexts. See also loísmo.

Neuter forms such as esto were preserved because unlike most nouns in Latin, the difference between masculine and neuter for these pronouns did not depend on a final consonant. For example, most second declension Latin neuter singulars in the nominative case ended in -um, the non-neuter counterpart often ending in -us. When the final consonants in these endings are dropped, the result is -u for both; this became -o in Spanish. However, a word like Latin iste had the neuter istud; the former became este and the latter became esto in Spanish.

Another sign that Spanish once had a grammatical neuter exists in words that derive from neuter plurals. In Latin, a neuter plural ended in -a, and so these words today in Spanish are interpreted as feminine singulars and take singular verb forms; however, they do express some notion of a plural.

Number

Spanish has two grammatical numbers: singular and plural. The singular form is the lemma (the form found in dictionaries or base form), and the plural of the majority of words is formed by adding -s if the lemma ends in an unstressed vowel or stressed e, or -es if it ends with a consonant or stressed vowel other than e. Note that final -y in words like rey, though phonetically a vowel, counts as a consonant (rey → reyes). The addition of -es to certain nouns produces changes in the placement of stress, thereby affecting the presence of accent marks (canción → canciones, bongó → bongoes but rubí → rubíes), and causes a spelling change in stems ending in -c, -g and -z (lápiz → lápices, frac → fraques). Words ending in an unstressed vowel followed by -s or -x are unchanged in the plural.

The masculine gender is inclusive and is used for plural forms of groups of mixed gender (literally or otherwise): los niños, grammatically masculine, may mean "the children" or "the boys". The feminine gender is exclusive in the plural: las niñas = "the little girls". When male sex needs to be shown exclusively in the plural, phrases such as los niños varones are used. Feminists (and their satirists) try to reverse the pattern with phrases such as las personas humanas jóvenes varones ("the young male human people").

Some words are formally always grammatically plural: pantalones "trousers", tijeras "scissors". In many dialects, however, these words are taken to be semantic plurals, and their singular forms are used instead: pantalón, tijera.

In expressions with an indefinite determiner, singular forms are used (unlike English, where "some" and "any" tend to modify plural nouns).

• Si hay algún árbol, lo derribaremos = "If there is any tree, we will tear it down"
• Por cualquier medio = "By any means"

Forms of ninguno ("no") always take singular noun phrases, even where plurality might be intended:

• Ningún obstáculo se interpone = "No obstacle is in our way", "There are no obstacles in our way"
• No vi a ninguna mujer = "I saw no women", "I did not see any women"

The determiner cualquiera has a plural form (cualesquiera), but it is never used outside formal or technical contexts.

Diminutives, augmentatives and suffixes

A very productive set of suffixes can be added to existing nouns and adjectives to form new Spanish nouns. This usually just slightly modifies the meaning, but sometimes it creates something new entirely.

The most common subset of such suffixes are the diminutives, which convey the idea of smallness, delicateness, etc. (also for endearing terms). The most common diminutive in Spanish is -it-. It is added to the root of the noun, and in actual usage, it takes the proper agreement for gender and number.

• planta → plantita / plantota ("plant" → "little plant" / "big plant")
• vaso → vasito / vasote ("glass" → "little glass" / "big glass")
• niño → niñito / niñote ("small boy" → "little tiny boy" / "Big (little tiny) boy")

In other cases, this ending can be pejorative or belittling.

• señor → señorito ("Sir/Mister" → "little sir/mister" (mockingly) compare señora → señorita ("Madame/Mrs." → "Miss/Ms."))

When the word does not end in a vowel, -it- becomes -cit- for diminutives if the word ends in something other than an unstressed "-o" or "-a". Agreement marks are added to it according to the gender and number:

• botón → botoncito / botonote
• Carmen → Carmencita
• mamá → mamita, mamacita
• madre → madrecita

This is slightly modified when the base word ends in z. Because z and soft c are the same sound in Spanish, an epenthetic e is inserted (notice the orthographic change): pez → pececito / pecezote. There is nothing fixed when the base ends in other consonants: azúcar → azuquítar or azuquita / azucota.

When words end in -s or -te, there are varied approaches.

Idiomatic diminutives

The choice of diminutive is often a mark of regional dialects and influence of coexistent Romance languages. Educated speakers who would use -ito / -ita or no diminutive at all in more formal speech may use local forms when they want a friendlier or more colourful way of expressing themselves, sometimes borrowing another region's diminutive.

So, instead of the standard -ito, one could hear:

• -illo / -illa especially in Andalusia (’quillo for chico is a typical Cádiz interjection).
• -ico / -ica in Aragon, Navarra, Murcia, eastern Andalusia, parts of the Valencian Community, La Mancha ...
  • a variant of this diminutive is used in many Latin American countries, but only for nouns ending in -to, -ta or -te, while in other nouns -ito / -ita is used.
• -ín / -ina or -ino / -ina in the Spanish spoken in Asturias, as in Asturian or Bable.
  • this form is also present in the Rioplatense variety of Spanish spoken in Argentina and Uruguay, famously in the lyrics of the Argentine tango Cafetín de Buenos Aires by Enrique Santos Discépolo ("De chiquilin te miraba de afuera...")
• ín / -ina in Spanish spoken in Extremadura or León, as in Leonese.
• -iño / -iña in the Spanish spoken in Galicia, as in Galician.
• -uco / -uca in Cantabria.
• -eto / -eta in Aragon.
• -ete / -eta, possibly from Catalan, in much of eastern Spain.
• -uelo / -uela.

In fossilised forms, these can be found in standard words, such as puerta → portillo, burro → borrico, Venecia → Venezuela, paño → pañuelo, calle → calleja → callejuela etc.

Sometimes different suffixes are used for variety when more than one is used at once:

• chico → chiquito → chiquitillo etc.

Other suffixes

As well as being an Andalusian (especially Seville) alternative to -ito, the suffix -illo is also a special diminutive with a nuance of "a funny sort of...". It is also used to create new nouns:

• palo "stick" → palillo "toothpick"
• bolso "handbag" → bolsillo "pocket"
• guerra "war" → guerrilla "hit-and-run warfare"

An example of the same phenomenon, but using an augmentative, is -ón:

• soltero "single man" → solterón "confirmed single man"
• soltera "single woman" → solterona "spinster"
• puerta "door" → portón "gate" / "large door"

Another suffix that can either denote a blow with or be an augmentative is -azo:

• puerta ("door") → portazo ("slam of a door")
• mano ("hand") → manotazo ("a hit with the hand")
• cacerola ("saucepan") → cacerolazo (both "a blow with a saucepan" or "a big saucepan", also a form of protest)
• Bogotá (Bogotá, capital of Colombia) → Bogotazo (the "Bogotazo", the riots on April 9, 1948)
• Caracas (Caracas, capital of Venezuela) → Caracazo (the "Caracazo", the violent protests of 27 February 1989)
• derecha ("right hand") → derechazo (either a "right-hander" when slapping someone, or a "right-handed pass with the cape" in bullfighting)
• flecha ("arrow") → flechazo ("arrow shot" / "arrow wound", or figuratively "love at first sight")