El género gramatical

Spanish, unlike English, classifies nouns according to grammatical gender. It's important to remember that although we use the terms "masculine" and "feminine" to talk about grammatical gender, in most cases there's no correlation between grammatical gender and actual gender. For example, although we say el hombre (masculine) and la mujer (feminine), words like la gente and la persona have "feminine" grammatical gender but can refer to either men or women. It might help to think of grammatical gender as dividing Spanish nouns into two classes: those that appear with the "masculine" articles el, los, un and unos and those that appear with the "feminine" articles la, las, una and unas.

These two noun classes in Spanish also have characteristic endings which can help you to identify if a word is masculine or feminine, although there are many exceptions. The following charts show the basic rules with some of the most common exceptions:

Common masculine endings
	Examples	Common Exceptions
-o	el teléfono, el foco, el ruido	la foto, la mano, la moto
-r	el rumor, el temor, el lunar	la labor
-n	el examen, el régimen, el don	la imagen, la razón
-l	el ferrocarril, el sol, el árbol	la catedral, la cárcel, la piel, la sal

Common feminine endings
	Examples	Common Exceptions
-a	la sala, la tarjeta, la computadora	el día, el mapa, el problema
-d	la ciudad, la libertad, la pared	el abad, el césped, el huésped
-z	la paz, la luz, la delgadez	el arroz, el lápiz, el maíz, el pez
-ción -sión	la acción, la construcción, la dimensión	(none)
-umbre	la cumbre, la muchedumbre	(none)
-is	la artritis, la crisis, la hipótesis	el análisis, el éxtasis

Notes

1. The gender of nouns ending in -e should be memorized. Common masculine words ending in -e include el baile, el cierre, el coche, el nombre, el parque, el pie, el roble, el timbre, el valle. Common feminine words ending in -e include la calle, la clase, la frase, la gente, la llave, la mente, la nave, la nieve, la noche, la parte, la serie.

2. There is a group of words that are feminine but that take the masculine articles (el, un) in the singular because they begin with a stressed a. Common words in this group include agua (el agua but las aguas, agua fría), águila (el águila, las águilas), aula (el aula, las aulas), ave (el ave, las aves), alma (el alma, las almas), hada (el hada, las hadas)

3. Many words ending in -ma are masculine rather than feminine, and should be memorized as exceptions. They include el aroma, el cinema, el clima, el dilema, el diploma, el drama, el idioma, el lema, el panorama, el paradigma, el poema, el problema, el programa, el sistema, el tema, y el trauma.

4. Some words change in meaning depending on whether they are masculine or feminine. Common examples include el capital (=money) vs. la capital (=capital city), el coma (=coma) vs. la coma (=comma), el cura (=priest) vs. la cura (=cure), el guía (=the guide) vs. la guía (=guidebook, or female guide), el orden (=order, agenda) vs. la orden (=command) and el policía (=the policeman) vs. la policía (=the police as a group, or a policewoman).

5. There is a relatively small number of words with ambiguous gender. In some cases, both are equally correct, and in others one is more widely seen as correct. Some words with ambiguous gender include:
arte - Generally el arte in the singular, so el arte contemporáneo, but feminine in the plural, so las bellas artes.
azúcar - Generally used with the masculine article, so el azúcar, but often found with feminine adjectives (azúcar blanca).
mar - The masculine form (el mar) is more common; la mar often has a poetic sense.
radio - In Spain and parts of South America, radio is always feminine when it refers to the radio; the masculine form means "radius". In Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, la radio refers to radio programming, while el radio refers to the radio as a machine.
sartén - Meaning "frying pan", it's masculine (el sartén) in Spain but feminine (la sartén) in most of Latin America.

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