Why is a dress masculine ?

Question

In the flash card set La Ropa I discovered that El vestido meaning dress is masculine. I would have assumed it would have been a feminine article....La Falda ..skirt.

Can someone tell me if there is a common sense way to have a guess at whether an article is masculine or feminine..Without having the el or la prefix ??

What did cave men wear? Maybe something like a dress....Of course, I'm kidding, but the roots of all our words are shrouded in mystery and I doubt (only doubt) that anyone ever chose the gender conciously. Or? Yes, a fascinating mystery, language. - Janice, Aug 21, 2009

Answer 1

Can someone tell me if there is a common sense way to have a guess at whether an article is masculine or feminine..Without having the el or la prefix ??

No one can, because genders are not logical. Period. Don't try to find any logic. Different languages use different genders for the same word.

Your question is similar to "Why is a chair written with 'ch'? Why does it not have a 'w', if it is made of wood? The word wood has a 'w'"

Gracias :-) - peaceful-wren, Aug 21, 2009

Answer 2

Generally speaking, if the noun ends in -a, it's feminine, and if it ends in -o, it's masculine. Thus, you get la falda and el vestido. Also, nouns ending in -ción are feminine as well.

Examples: -la canción = the song -la música = the music -la silla = the chair -el gato = the cat -el libro = the book -el río = the river

Thank you I did not know the ción ending for nouns was feminine. - peaceful-wren, Aug 24, 2009

Answer 3

You might find this thread interesting: when-to-use-masculine-or-feminine

Thank you Janice will be sure to check these links out :-) - peaceful-wren, Aug 24, 2009

Answer 4

Here is another interesting thread on the subject which you might want to take a look at:

why-do-they-choose-masculine-and-feminine-for-food