In Spanish, grammatical gender is a linguistic feature that affects different types of words and how they agree with each other. It applies to nouns, adjectives, determiners, and pronouns. Every Spanish noun has a specific gender, either masculine or feminine, in the context of a sentence. Generally, nouns referring to males or male animals are masculine, while those referring to females are feminine.[1][2] In terms of importance, the masculine gender is the default or unmarked, while the feminine gender is marked or distinct.[2]
Many gender-related features are common across Romance languages. However, Spanish differs from other Romance languages, like French and Italian, in its kinship terms. For instance, the Spanish words for "uncle" and "aunt" are tío and tía respectively, while in French, they are oncle and tante. Similarly, the Spanish words for "brother" and "sister" are hermano and hermana, whereas in Italian, they are fratello and sorella.
Another unique aspect of Spanish is that personal pronouns have distinct feminine forms for the first and second person plural. For example, the Spanish pronouns nosotras and vosotras specifically refer to groups of females, distinguishing them from the masculine forms used for mixed-gender or male groups.[3]
- ^ Gender of nouns in Spanish Archived 2017-08-23 at the Wayback Machine - Gender rules
- ^ a b Harris, James (1991). "The Exponence of Gender in Spanish". Linguistic Inquiry. 22 (1). The MIT Press: 27–62.
- ^ Eisenberg, Daniel (1985). "Grammatical Sexism in Spanish" (PDF). Journal of Hispanic Philology. 9: 189–196. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 28, 2018.