Nouns - masculine or feminine

Question

I looked up the word camarada in the dictionary. It says it a masculine or feminine noun. Does that mean it can be camarada and camarado. How do you know if you can't change a noun from masculine to feminine and visa versa'

Answer 1

HI la cosa!

it means it is used for both sexes:

el camarada (a man)
la camarada ( a woman)

Answer 2

No it means the same word is used for masuline or feminine
Un camarada
Una camarada

It is the same for the word soldado - soldier, which is the same for both sexes
Una joven soldado - A young woman soldier
Un joven soldado - A young man soldier

Answer 3

Heidita said:

HI la cosa!

it means it is used for both sexes:

el camarada (a man)

la camarada ( a woman)

Damn your fast

Answer 4

Damn your fast

"Maldito sea tu ayuno"'?

Answer 5

Who's fast?

James Santiago said:

Damn your fast"Maldito sea tu ayuno"'?

>

Answer 6

La Cosa,
Eddy was replying to Heidita, and he meant to say that she was quicker in replying than he was. But his misspelling and lack of punctuation resulted in what I translated into Spanish as a little joke.

Answer 7

I thought as much.

Answer 8

La Cosa said:

I thought as much.

It should have been "Damn! You'r fast.

Answer 9

Or "you're." If you wanted.

Answer 10

There are quite a lot of words ending in -a that don't change in masculine or feminine. Most of them are Greek, but not all:

atleta
poeta
artista
idiota

You just need to remember them one by one.

Answer 11

And there are words that end in -o that are similarly bigender. A common example is modelo.

Answer 12

James Santiago said:

Or "you're." If you wanted.

Or even dieing, if YOU wanted

Answer 13

Touché!

Answer 14

James Santiago said:

And there are words that end in -o that are similarly bigender. A common example is modelo.

Those words have often a similar origin. "Modelo" is a short for "mujer modelo", or similar, where the second noun is used as an attribute for the first, and therefore, it doesn't agree with the first. Eddy's examples for "soldado" illustrate this perfectly.

Answer 15

lazarus1907 said:

Those words have often a similar origin. "Modelo" is a short for "mujer modelo", or similar, where the second noun is used as an attribute for the first, and therefore, it doesn't agree with the first. Eddy's examples for "soldado" illustrate this perfectly.
Please expand on the notion of "attribute". I don't think that there's any corresponding notion in English grammar. I'm familiar with the idea that the gender cannot always be inferred from the form of the noun e.g the previous modelo, soldado and others such as "artista" but I was prepared to accept these as simply being exceptions. Your reference to "attribute" suggests a more systematic/formalized treatment/explanation of such cases.