Male and female nouns

Question

I realize that all nouns have a gender, male or female, but do all male nouns have the "el" prefix and all female nouns have the "la" prefix (excluding the exceptions). If not, how do you determine which ones should have the prefix?

Answer 1

By all means, read the article to which Lovely has provided a link. The only problem with that article is the use of the terms "male"/"female". Grammarians speak of "masculine"/"feminine" and insist that this is not a matter of X/Y chromosomes but, simply labels applied to certain classes of nouns (one could equally have said "yin/yang"). No sane person thinks that a "mesa" is "girlish" nor that a "vestido" is "macho". Grammatical gender has almost nothing to do with sex.

The links are good, but they are not answering my initial question. For example, is it proper to place "el" in front of a month, like "el enero" for January? The Spanish dictionary that I am using shows the gender of nouns, but nothing about prefixes. - shrvjack, JUL 12, 2010

Answer 2

Hi shrvjack , welcome to the forum ! check this link it may help you