Spanish Nouns

Spanish nouns express concrete objects, groups, qualities, feelings, and abstractions. All nouns have a grammatical gender (masculine or feminine) and are countable or uncountable, affecting their inflection for number (singular or plural).

Gender

All Spanish nouns are gendered, falling into one of two categories: masculine or feminine.

In plural, the masculine is generally used when referring to mixed or unspecified genders (e.g., "los niños" can mean "the children" or "the boys"). The feminine form is exclusive in the plural, referring only to females (e.g., "las niñas" refers only to "the girls").

Gender assignment can be arbitrary, except in the case of certain nouns related to humans and animals where it often aligns with biological sex. For example, "el abuelo" (grandfather) and "la abuela" (grandmother). Some nouns use the same form for both genders but change the article, like "el estudiante" (male student) and "la estudiante" (female student).

Number

Nouns inflect for number:

• Singular: Refers to one item (e.g., "libro" - book).
• Plural: Refers to more than one item and is formed by adding -s or -es, depending on the ending of the singular form (e.g., "libros" - books).

Things to Note

• Gender and number agreement: Adjectives and articles must agree in gender and number with the nouns they describe.
• Heteronyms: Some nouns have completely different forms for masculine and feminine, such as "el toro" (bull) and "la vaca" (cow).
• Neuter gender: Remnants of a neuter gender exist in pronouns like "esto" (this) and "aquello" (that), though nouns do not have a neuter form.

Spanish nouns also exhibit a complex system of diminutive, augmentative, and pejorative suffixes that modify the base meaning of the nouns to express size, affection, or disdain.