When to use "el" and when to use "la".
I am totally confused! When can you tell when to use "el" and when to use "la" before any common noun? I get that when you are speaking about a male you use "el", and when using a noun in a feminine way you use "la". How do you tell besides that?
3 Answers
Hello Keziah,
Welcome to the SpanishDict forum 
Words themselves each have genders in Spanish and these do not relate to the gender of the speaker (whether the speaker is male or female) but to the gender of each noun.
The general guideline in Spanish is that words ending in the letter O are masculine while those ending in an A are feminine. Words ending in e are usually feminine...eg; la gente = the people; la mente = the mind/intellect ; frente = forehead
eg: un cuartO = a room; un teléfonO = a telephone ; un perrO = a dog
unA casA = A house ; unA mesA = a table This is/can only be a guideline as there are many exceptions:
Exceptions: eg: el agua = water ; el águila = the eagle ; el problema = the problem. La mano = The hand
All Spanish articles should be learnt with their nouns at the same time, especially those exceptions of which a few examples have been given, to avoid confusion later on!
I would strongly recommend that you check out the excellent grammar section in Spanish Dict and carefully read through the section about articles and gender; several times if necessary until you have a clearer idea. Note how the examples support the principles ! 
If, after reading through these grammar reference articles you still have some doubts, please do not hesitate to ask/post another question!
I hope this helps you
It's not about males and females.
In Spanish, all nouns have gender. La mesa (the table) is feminine. El libro (the book) is masculine. You use la before feminine nouns and el before masculine nouns.
OK, it's a little more complicated than that. A female pilot is la piloto, and a male poet is el poeta. So here the article la or el depends on the person's gender, not just on the noun. But... I don't think you need to worry about that at this stage.
How do you know whether a noun is masculine or feminine? Look it up! Although most of the time, if it ends in o it is masculine, and if it ends in a it is feminine.
Each noun has an associated gender that must be learned.
There are general rules that seem to work- like anything that ends in –ión seems to always be feminine.
There are also general rules that are broken commonly- like things that end in a are feminine- except that there are exceptions, including many but not all that end in ma, pa, ta. If you know which came from Greek it helps, but by that point you might as well just learn the gender.
Ex: Pluma, cama are feminine, tema, drama, sistema are masculine.
O works more often for masculine, but foto and mano are feminine for example.
Then there are feminine nouns with a stressed initial “a” that in the singular take el:
El agua fría. Not la agua fría, not el agua frío.
