is the word male or female

Question

When you say sofa why is it el sofá instead of la sofá. I thought a on the end made the word female.

Answer 1

That is just a general rule but there are some words that are just tricky and have to be memorized.

masculine & feminine

Here

is a link from the Spanishdict grammar section on masculine/feminine/irregulars

Answer 2

Plenty exceptions, even though guessing feminine for words ending in A is a good bet.

Por ejemplo, EL día.

Note also that almost all words ending in MA are greek derived and are masculine. This is the only group of exceptions I know to A endings in general being feminine. You have to think of them as ending in MA

EL drama, sistema, problema, tema etc etc

Here´s a decent read.

http://www.spanishdict.com/topics/show/1