Weird Sex

1
Weird Sex

• Maybe we should call it gender.

2
Weird Gender

• We know that all Spanish nouns have gender.
• We know how to tell the gender of a noun . . .
• most of the time.

3
Weird Gender

• Masculine words end in
• o el hermano, el viejo, el puerco
• or el señor, el color, el doctor
• ón el balón, el sillón, el ratón
• (note that an i does not preceed this
  ending).
• ol el fútbol, el sol, el básquetbol

4
Weird Gender

• Feminine words end in
• a la vaca, la señora, la mochila
• ión la televisión, la lección, la reflexión
• d la verdad, la salud, la red
• z la luz, la actriz, la vez

5
Weird Gender

• However, some words seem to follow some other
  rules.

6
Weird Gender

• For example, those words that end in -ma that
  deal with science or the arts.
• It is easy to spot these words they all came from
  Greek and are used in Spanish as well as English.
• That means that they are cognates.
• And, they are masculine.

7
Weird Gender

• Some words that follow this form are
• el drama, el sistema, el diploma, el clima, el
  tema, el aroma, el problema, el programa, and
  many more.
• But not, la llama, la cama, etc. because they are
  not cognates!

8
Weird Gender

• A couple of words came from longer words and just
  kept the original gender
• la foto (short for fotografía)
• la moto (short for motocicleta)

9
Weird Gender

• Some nouns can be either gender, and we indicate
  which by using the proper article
• la turista, el turista
• el artista, la artista (all of the ista
  nouns are like this)
• la estudiante, el estudiante (all of the nte
  nouns are like this)
• el joven, la joven

10
Weird Gender

• Nouns that end -e can be either masculine or
  feminine.
• They are truly the weird sex words because there
  is no way to foretell which gender they will be.
• We have to learn each one of them individually.

11
Weird Gender

• Some examples of these -e word are
• la gente
• el aire
• la leche
• la frase
• el coche

12
Weird Gender

• Finally, there are words that go against the
  rules that we have learned (the dreaded
  exceptions)
• la mano
• el día
• la flor
• la razón
• el camión
• and more.

13
Weird Sex

• Fin