Spanish: An Essential Grammar

Fixed gender nouns

Some nouns have a fixed gender regardless of the biological gender of the

person they denote:

la persona person la víctima victim

la estrella (film) star la celebridad celebrity

el personaje character el genio genius

This is true also of many nouns designating wild animals. Where a distinc-

tion needs to be made it is done through the addition of macho‘male’ or

hembra‘female’, or by using the phrases el macho deor la hembra de:

el panda panda las garzas macho male herons

la víbora adder, viper el macho del tejón male badger

Gender and social change

During the final decades of the twentieth century, changing attitudes to the

roles of women in society have initiated what has become an ongoing

process of linguistic change. Consequently, it has become common prac-

tice to use feminine forms for job titles that hitherto existed only in the

masculine form:

abogado abogada lawyer

catedrático catedrática professor

ministro ministra minister

ingeniero ingeniera engineer

juez jueza judge

Masculine plural for mixed gender groups

The masculine plural form of a noun bearing biological gender is used in

reference to groups containing at least one male:

los niños the children los alumnos the students

los señores Mr and Mrs los esposos husband and wife

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Nouns

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