Nouns - masculine or feminine
I looked up the word camarada in the dictionary. It says it a masculine or feminine noun. Does that mean it can be camarada and camarado. How do you know if you can't change a noun from masculine to feminine and visa versa'
19 Answers
Very funny , James and Eddy...I guess we can call it a truce...so far. 
And no, Eddy, no need to explain truce or however you spell that, to me, lol. (I guess that is French'')
James Santiago said:
Touché!
James
As you are aware, this is a Spanish information site, however, as you are a valued and highly proficient contributor, I will attempt to answer your "French" question but must point out, this is a one and only.
In fencing, touché (French: touched, Pronounced Too-shay) is used as an acknowledgement of a hit, called out by the fencer who is hit. A referee can call out touché to refer to a touch being called. The French call for "no point" is "pas de touché" (English: no touch). It is from the infinitive verb 'toucher' which means to touch and is put into the past tense by removing the ending, (er) and adding the appropriate conjugation (é).
The word touché is often used in "popular culture" and general conversation, in an argument or debate. If one person presents an argument and another delivers a clever or apt response, the first person may respond with "touché" as a way of acknowledging a good response. For instance I may well type something incorrectly once maybe twice and you may point out my mistakes. I could them counter with something that you incorrectly typed, highly unlikely I know, your response may well be "touché", he he.
Jargon is hard enough in your own language when it is not related to your area of expertise, but when it refers to a different field (i.e. a different grammar) in a different language, translations can become useless. What I was trying to say is that in Spanish, you SOMETIMES can use a noun to modify another noun without using "de" or other morphological methods.
"Artista" was "artista" in Latin, and for etymological reasons, it doesn't change for either gender. On the other hand, nouns that modify nouns, in Spanish, are almost non-existent compared to English, but there are some, nevertheless. These exceptions often lead to exceptional agreement rules too, and you have to cope with them. English adjectives, nouns and verbs are often undistinguishable, but in Spanish (and many other languages) are different, so using a noun to modify another noun is rather unusual in Spanish, whereas in English you barely notice the difference. Adjectives normally agree, but nouns modifying other nouns don't, and that's why you have this strange behaviour.
Thanks for asking that question, samdie. I was afraid to. 
lazarus1907 said:
Those words have often a similar origin. "Modelo" is a short for "mujer modelo", or similar, where the second noun is used as an attribute for the first, and therefore, it doesn't agree with the first. Eddy's examples for "soldado" illustrate this perfectly.
Please expand on the notion of "attribute". I don't think that there's any corresponding notion in English grammar. I'm familiar with the idea that the gender cannot always be inferred from the form of the noun e.g the previous modelo, soldado and others such as "artista" but I was prepared to accept these as simply being exceptions. Your reference to "attribute" suggests a more systematic/formalized treatment/explanation of such cases.
James Santiago said:
And there are words that end in -o that are similarly bigender. A common example is modelo.
Those words have often a similar origin. "Modelo" is a short for "mujer modelo", or similar, where the second noun is used as an attribute for the first, and therefore, it doesn't agree with the first. Eddy's examples for "soldado" illustrate this perfectly.
Touché!
James Santiago said:
Or "you're." If you wanted.
Or even dieing, if YOU wanted
And there are words that end in -o that are similarly bigender. A common example is modelo.
There are quite a lot of words ending in -a that don't change in masculine or feminine. Most of them are Greek, but not all:
atleta
poeta
artista
idiota
You just need to remember them one by one.
Or "you're." If you wanted.
La Cosa said:
I thought as much.
It should have been "Damn! You'r fast.
I thought as much.
La Cosa,
Eddy was replying to Heidita, and he meant to say that she was quicker in replying than he was. But his misspelling and lack of punctuation resulted in what I translated into Spanish as a little joke.
Who's fast?
James Santiago said:
Damn your fast"Maldito sea tu ayuno"'?
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