The Spanish language

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 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

All Spanish noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s have one of two grammatical gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

s: masculine and feminine (mostly conventional, that is, arbitrarily assigned). Most adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s and pronoun

Pronoun

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...

s, and all article

Article (grammar)

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and some...

s and participle

Participle

In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...

s, indicate the gender of the noun they reference or modify.

In a sentence like "Large tables are nicer", the Spanish equivalent, Las mesas grandes son más bonitas, must use words according to the gender of the noun. The noun, mesa ("table"), is feminine in Spanish. Therefore, the article must be feminine too, and so la instead of el, is required. However, mesas is plural here, so we need las rather than la. The two adjectives, whether next to the noun or after the verb, have to "agree" with the noun as well. Grande is a word which is invariable for gender, so it just takes a plural marker: grandes. Bonito is a word that can agree for both gender and number, so we say bonitas to go with mesas. A student of Spanish must keep in mind all these features when making sentences.

Noun gender

In general, most nouns that end in -a, -ción / -sión and -ad are feminine; the rest of the nouns, which usually end in -o or a consonant, are masculine.

Nouns can be grouped in the following categories:

• Applied to persons and most domesticated animals:
  • Declinable nouns. The feminine form adds a or replaces the final vowel by a, e.g. el profesor/la profesora, el presidente/la presidenta, el perro/la perra. Often, nouns that refer to positions that are traditionally held by men are declinable.
  • Invariant nouns (in Spanish, sustantivos de género común). The feminine form and the masculine form are identical: el artista/la artista, el testigo/la testigo, el estudiante/la estudiante.
  • Nouns with a unique grammatical gender. The noun has a fixed gender, regardless of the sex of the person it describes: el personaje, la visita.

• Applied to wild and some domesticated animals:
  • Nouns where the two sexes of animals have different words to describe them: el toro/la vaca, el caballo/la yegua.
  • Epicene
    Epicene
    Epicene is an adjective for loss of gender distinction, often specific loss of masculinity. It includes:* effeminacy — a man with characteristics that are traditionally feminine...
    
     nouns. The gender of the noun is fixed and sex is indicated by macho (male) or hembra (female). Examples: la jirafa macho, la jirafa hembra, el rinoceronte macho, el rinoceronte hembra.

• Applied to things:
  • Masculine, e.g. el pan.
  • Feminine, e.g. la leche.
  • Vacillant nouns (called sustantivos ambiguos in Spanish) accept either gender, e.g. linde ('boundary') and testuz ('animal's forehead'). 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 (oddly) feminine with el (perhaps as a carry-over from Old Spanish
    Old Spanish language
    Old Spanish, also known as Old Castilian or Mediaeval Spanish , is an early form of the Spanish language that was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula from the tenth century until roughly the beginning of the fifteenth century, before a consonantic readjustment gave rise to the evolution of modern...
    
    , in which the singular definite article was invariably el before nouns beginning with a-, regardless of gender and regardless of stress). Spanish is predominantly a masculine-based language. As such, the determiner seems to go in the masculine in standard use: el, este, ese, tanto, especially when referring to cases where gender is not specified. Any adjectives agreeing with it are usually masculine in Spain and feminine in Latin America: el azúcar moreno o blanco / el azúcar negra o rubia. Mar ("sea") is normally masculine, but in poetry and sailors' speech it is feminine. Arte 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".
  • There is a pattern with words with an initial stressed /a/ sound, such as agua ("water"), that makes them seem ambiguous in gender, but they are not. Such words take the masculine article, both definite (el) and indefinite (un), in the singular form; they also take the singular modifiers algún (instead of alguna) and ningún (instead of ninguna) when those modifiers precede the nouns. Similar words include el alma / un alma ("soul"), el ala / un ala ("wing"), el águila / un águila ("eagle"), and el hacha / un hacha ("ax"). Still they are feminine and, as such, they take feminine modifiers (except those cases previously mentioned) in both singular and plural forms, and they take feminine articles in the plural form as in las aguas frías.
  • Sometimes, two homonyms will differ in gender, e.g. el capital ("funds") and la capital ("capital city"); el cura ("the priest") and la cura ("the cure").

Determining gender from endings

Nouns ending in -o are masculine, with the only notable exception of the word mano ("hand"); -a is typically feminine, with notable exceptions; other vowels and consonants are more often than not masculine, but many are feminine, particularly those referring to women (la madre) or ending in -ción/sión, -dad/tad, -ez (la nación, la televisión, la soledad, la libertad, la vejez).

A small set of words of Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 origin and ending in -ma, "-pa", or "-ta" are masculine: problema ("problem"), lema ("lemma, motto"), tema ("theme, topic"), sistema ("system"), telegrama ("telegram"), mapa ("map"), poeta ("poet"), planeta ("planet"), etc.

Words ending in -ista referring to a person can generally be either gender: el artista, la artista, "the artist, the female artist". The same is true of words ending in -ante or -ente, though sometimes separate female forms ending in -a are used.

Words taken from foreign languages may:

• take the gender they have in that language, with neuter taken to be the same as masculine (so English nouns are made masculine)
• take the gender it seems to be (e.g. la Coca-Cola because it ends in -a)
• take the gender of the closest-related Spanish word (e.g. la Guinness because of la cerveza)

Names of people

People's names agree with the sex of the person, even if they appear to be the opposite:

• Chema es guapo
• Amparo es guapa

Names of settlements

Usage for places varies. You can choose between making them:

• Feminine if they end in -a, otherwise masculine:
  • la Barcelona de Gaudí
  • el Londres de Dickens
• Agree with the underlying noun el pueblo or la ciudad
  • Nueva York (city)
  • la antigua Cartago (city)
  • Fraga es pequeño (village/small town)
• Always masculine: (this usage may seem wrong to some speakers)
  • Barcelona no es pequeño
  • Londres no es pequeño

With examples like New York, the Nueva is a fixed part of the name and so cannot be made masculine, but New Mexico is translated as Nuevo México and considered masculine, since México is a masculine noun.

Rivers

Rivers are masculine because of the underlying masculine noun río. The ancient Roman belief that rivers (amnes) were male gods may also influence this. Locally, a few rivers may be feminine, but the masculine is always safe and correct.

• el [río de la] Plata = "The River Plate" (literally "the River of Silver")
• el [río] Támesis = "The River Thames"
• el [río] Tajo = "The River Tagus"
• el [río] Colorado = "The Colorado River" (literally "the Red River")
• el [río] Cinca / la Cinca = "The River Cinca" (in the Aragonese Pyrenees)

Vestiges of a neutral gender

While Spanish is generally regarded to have two genders, its ancestor, Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

, 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

Andrés Bello

Andrés de Jesús María y José Bello López was a Venezuelan humanist, poet, lawmaker, philosopher, educator and philologist, whose political and literary works constitute an important part of Spanish American culture...

 in his work on the grammar of Latin American Spanish. http://www.jabega.net/bello/bajo15.html

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 "him". 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.

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 declension

Latin is an inflected language, and as such has nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. There are five declensions, which are numbered and grouped by ending and...

 Latin neuter singulars in the nominative case

Nominative case

The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...

 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 get interpreted as singular feminine, and take singular verb forms; however, they do express some notion of a plural. For example, la física corresponds to English "physics", a plural.

Number

There are two grammatical numbers: singular and plural. The singular form is the one found in dictionaries (base form). The plural is indicated in most words by adding -s (if the base form ends in a vowel) or -es otherwise. 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), and may cause a spelling change in a stem ending in -z (lápiz → lápices).

The masculine gender is used for plural forms of mixed sexes (it is inclusive): 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 diminutive

Diminutive

In language structure, a diminutive, or diminutive form , is a formation of a word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning, smallness of the object or quality named, encapsulation, intimacy, or endearment...

s, 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

Pejorative

Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...

 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

Epenthesis

In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence, for the addition of a consonant, and anaptyxis for the addition of a vowel....

 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, you could find:

• -illo / -illa especially in Andalusia
  Andalusia
  Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
  
   (’quillo for chico is a typical Cádiz
  Cádiz
  Cadiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the homonymous province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....
  
   interjection).
• -ico / -ica in Aragon
  Aragon
  Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...
  
  , Navarra, Murcia
  Murcia
  -History:It is widely believed that Murcia's name is derived from the Latin words of Myrtea or Murtea, meaning land of Myrtle , although it may also be a derivation of the word Murtia, which would mean Murtius Village...
  
  , eastern Andalusia
  Andalusia
  Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
  
  , parts of the Valencian Community
  Valencian Community
  The Valencian Community is an autonomous community of Spain located in central and south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Valencia...
  
  , ...
  • a variant of this diminutive is used in many latinamerican 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
  Asturias
  The Principality of Asturias is an autonomous community of the Kingdom of Spain, coextensive with the former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages...
  
  , as in Asturian or Bable.
• ín / -ina in Spanish spoken in León
  León, Spain
  León is the capital of the province of León in the autonomous community of Castile and León, situated in the northwest of Spain. Its city population of 136,985 makes it the largest municipality in the province, accounting for more than one quarter of the province's population...
  
   and in Leonese
  Leonese language
  The Leonese language is the endonym term used to refer to all vernacular Romance dialects of the Astur-Leonese linguistic group in the Spanish provinces of León and Zamora; Astur-Leonese also includes the dialects...
  
  .
• -iño / -iña in the Spanish spoken in Galicia, as in Galician
  Galician language
  Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
  
  .
• -uco / -uca in Cantabria
  Cantabria
  Cantabria is a Spanish historical region and autonomous community with Santander as its capital city. It is bordered on the east by the Basque Autonomous Community , on the south by Castile and León , on the west by the Principality of Asturias, and on the north by the Cantabrian Sea.Cantabria...
  
  .
• -eto / -eta in Aragon
  Aragon
  Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...
  
  .
• -ete / -eta, possibly from Catalan
  Catalan language
  Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
  
  , in much of eastern Spain
  Spain
  Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
  
  .
• -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.

There is a well-known tango called De chiquilin te miraba de afuera...

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 "bachelor" → solterón "confirmed bachelor"
• 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
  Cacerolazo
  A cacerolazo or cacerolada is a form of popular protest practised in certain Spanish-speaking countries – in particular Argentina and Chile – which consists in a group of people creating noise by banging pots, pans, and other utensils in order to call for attention...
  
  )
• Bogotá (Bogotá, capital of Colombia) → Bogotazo (the "Bogotazo
  Bogotazo
  El Bogotazo refers to the massive riots that followed the assassination in Bogotá, Colombia of Liberal leader and presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on April 9, 1948 during the government of President Mariano Ospina Pérez...
  
  ", the riots on April 9, 1948)
• Caracas (Caracas, capital of Venezuela) → Caracazo (the "Caracazo
  Caracazo
  The Caracazo or sacudón is the name given to the wave of protests, riots and looting and ensuing massacre that occurred on 27 February 1989 in the Venezuelan capital Caracas and surrounding towns. The riots — the worst in Venezuelan history — resulted in a death toll of anywhere between...
  
  ", 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")

External links

• WebWorkbooks: Spanish Nouns