What’s in store for you today: Nouns

Listen to Track 1.5.1

María: Bienvenido a mi casa. (Welcome to my house.)

Juan: Gracias. (Thank you.)

María: Vamos al salón. Allí tengo unas silla y la televisión. Podemos ver algo. La comida está en la cocina. Todavía está en el horno.  (Let’s go to the living room. There, I have chairs and the television. We can watch something. The food is in the kitchen. It’s still in the oven.)

Juan: ¿Dónde está el baño? (Where is the bathroom?)

María: Uno está aquí, y el otro está cerca del salón. Hay dos baños en mi casa. (One is here, and the other is close to the living room. There are two bathrooms in my house.)

Noun Genders

WHAT?! Nouns have a gender? Yes, as a matter of fact they do. In Spanish, at least.

Listen to Track 1.5.2

Mesa – Table (feminine)

Perro – Dog (masculine)

Libro – Book (masculine)

Casa – House (feminine)

Rules to Remember

• Generally speaking, words that end in -o are masculine (perro/libro).
• and words that end in -a are feminine (mesa/ casa).

Seems simple enough! But be careful, because there are nouns that don’t end in -o or -a. What about those?

Listen to Track 1.5.3

Mujer – Woman (feminine)

Hombre – Man (masculine)

Árbol – Tree (masculine)

Lección – Lesson (feminine)

It may seem a little overwhelming now, but getting used to identifying if a noun is masculine or feminine early on will make your Spanish-learning journey that much easier. So, to get you started, below you will find a few handy rules to remember when trying to figure out the gender of a noun.

It isn’t completely necessary right now to memorize all of these rules. It is important, however, that you become aware of this concept and understand it. It’s good to get some practice with it, as well. So that’s what we’ll do.

¡Ojo! (Look out!)

Note: As you will discover as we go along, there are ALWAYS exceptions in Spanish.

For example, día (“day”) ends in an -a but is, in fact, masculine. And lápiz (“pencil”) ends in “-z” but is masculine as well!

En mi casa…

Now that we know how to identify if a noun is masculine or feminine, we need some nouns that we can work with! For today’s vocabulary section, let’s talk about “in my house…”

Listen to Track 1.5.5

• Casa – House
• Salón – Living room
• Baño – Bathroom
• Cocina – Kitchen
• Habitación – Bedroom
• Cama – Bed
• Puerta – Door
• Ventana – Window
• Pared – Wall
• Sofá* – Couch/Sofa
• Lámpara – Lamp
• Televisión – Television
• Silla – Chair
• Nevera – Refrigerator
• Horno – Oven
• Estufa – Stove
• Microondas** – Microwave
• Inodoro – Toilet
• Ducha – Shower
• Bañera – Bathtub
• Oficina – Office

* Sofá is irregular (it’s masculine).

** Microondas is singular AND masculine – it’s doubly irregular! 

What’s in your home?

A few things to note

You might have noticed a few things about the last recording. For example, habitaciones doesn’t have an accent.

• When making words that end in -ción plural, you add an -es and drop the accent mark.

We saw the word hay. This means “there is/there are” and is very handy!

Also, when we were talking about “one bathroom” the number one (uno) became un and for “one kitchen” it became una.

• When we want to say “one something” (i.e. the “one” is an adjective saying how many of something there is), it will become:
  • Un with masculine objects
    and
  • Una with feminine objects