Appendix:Spanish nouns with irregular gender
Spanish has grammatical gender and many nouns in the language either end in -a (or sometimes other suffixes such as -dad or -ión) to represent grammatical femininity or -o to represent grammatical masculinity. As with most languages which have grammatical gender, adjectives and verbs are required to agree with the nouns. The standard feminine articles are la for singular and las las for plural while the masculine equivalents are el and los. Some words have unexpected grammatical gender based on their endings.
Feminine words ending in -o
[edit]- la disco (discotheque, a contraction of discoteca; note that other uses of the term—such as a vinyl record or a throwing discus—are masculine)
- la foto (photo, as in photograph, a contraction of fotografía)
- la mano (hand, recognizable to English speakers from the phrase mano a mano)
Masculine words ending in -a or other feminine suffixes
[edit]- el anagrama (anagram)
- el aroma (aroma)
- el avión (airplane)
- el axioma (axiom)
- el califa (caliph)
- el Canadá (Canada)
- el camión (truck, see also camioneta)
- el carisma (charisma)
- el clima (climate)
- el día (day, both the standard measure of 24 hours and a colloquial calendar day)
- el idioma (language, see also lengua, another common word for "language")
- el mapa (map)
- el paraguas (umbrella, compound word of para and agua [lit. to stop water]; note that it is also its own plural)
- el planeta (planet)
- el policía (police officer, a feminine police officer is referred to as policía femenino)
- el problema (problem)
- el programa (program, meaning a broadcast, a plan of action, or software)
- el sistema (system)
- el sofá (sofa)
- el tanga (G-string)
- el tema (theme)
Words sometimes using either gender
[edit]- el/la atleta (athlete, the grammatical gender may change with the gender of the athlete in question)
- el/la boricua (boricua, the grammatical gender may change with the gender of the Puerto Rican in question, compare with puertorriqueña/puertorriqueño)
- el/la mar (ocean)
- el/la modelo (model, as in the fashion professional)
- el/la moto (feminine usage means motorcycle, a contraction of motocicleta [motorbike]; masculine usage means milestone, a contraction of mojón; compare with mota, American and Mexican slang for marijuana)
- el/la radio (the feminine refers to radio broadcasts and programming and the masculine refers to the object)
- el/la sartén (pan, as in the household cooking device; the regulatory body Real Academia Española based in Spain recommends feminine but masculine usage is common in Latin America)