las vs los
I now understand the female and male connections to these words but in helping our grandson in studying his vocabulary words I see the word Las Hamburguesas with a definition of hamburgers. Is there a way to determine an object as male or female when we are talking about such things as hamburgers?
3 Answers
the word is male .
This might be nitpicking, but nouns are not separated into "male" and "female" categories (the correct terminology here would be "masculine" and "feminine"). An "hamburguesa" is no more female than a "viaje" is male. It is certainly true that nouns that describe animate objects are categorized into separate groups based upon (biological) sex distinctions; however, it should also be noted that the remaining nouns are classified based upon features that are completely unrelated to biological sex. Instead, the vast majority of nouns in Spanish are typically assigned a gender either for certain morphological similarities to other nouns of the the same category (i.e. the words semana and mañana both end in -a and are thus categorized based upon their respective similarities to other nouns like hermana and chica which are grouped based on sexual distinctions) or for historical reasons (i.e. words like problema, tema and idioma that are derived from Greek rather than Latin and are classified as masculine despite their obvious morphological similarities to other nouns that are classified as feminine).
The key idea to understand with gender systems is that they are based upon the idea of "agreement." That is, any word that accompanies (i.e. modifies) a noun must agree in terms of gender. Given that, it might help to realize that noun gender can best be learned by exposing oneself to the word in contexts that include such modifiers. For example,
- Es una hamburguesa muy sabrosa
- La hamburguesa es bien rica y deliciosa
- ¿Quieres la hamburguesa? Sí la quiero.
By exposing yourself to words in full context (rather than trying to learn them in isolation), you will begin to recognize and use such patterns without having to resort to such abstract ideas as "masculine" and "feminine" or "gender systems" to navigate your way through the language.
( as a matter of fact most of words ending in "e" are male too . )
Perhaps, but there are plenty of words that end in -e that are feminine. To name a few:
aguanieve, anafase, ave, bacante, baguette, bajante, carne, clase, clave, contracorriente, corriente, costumbre, cumbre, fase, frase, fuente, gente, landre, laringe, llave, legumbre, lumbre, madre, mansedumbre, mente, metafase, metagoge, miente, noche, ónice, parte, pesadumbre, profase, querella, quiche, sangre, serpiente, servidumbre, suerte, tarde, tele, telofase, torre, vibrante, vislumbre
There are also plenty of words that end in -e that are used to describe people that can be masculine or feminine depending on the sex of the individual being described, for example:
acompañante, acudiante, adolescente, amante, badulaque, bergante, canadiense, comerciante, consorte, contrayente, cónyuge, declarante, descendiente, estadounidense, habitante, hablante, invidente, mercachifle, nicaragüense, oponente, residente, teniente, visitante
Aside from these, you also have at least a handful of nouns that end in -e that can be used as either masculine or feminine without changing the meaning, for example:
alcahuete, arte, azumbre
The word hamburguesa ends in a which in this case indicates feminine gender. Its plural will be las hamburguesas. Most of the time we can guess a gender because a usually indicates feminine and o indicates masculine. There are some words ending in other vowels or consonants. These words have to be memorized. Those exceptions of masculines ending in a should also be memorized.
When you see "a" or "sion " or "cion " you should know that the word is female and you should use "la " for the singular and "las " for the plural if there is an "s" after the mentioned things . e.g : "caja " has "a " in the end so you should say "la caja " but when there is "o" or "or" or "aje " the word is male . ( as a matter of fact most of words ending in "e" are male too . ) in your example "hamburguesa " as you see there is an "a" in the end so you understand that it is female but there is a point : some words are exceptions and there is no distinguishing mark for them for example in Spanish we say " la radio " however it ends with "o"
