Lesson 12: How to know which words are feminine and how verbs ending 'er' and 'ir' work

In this lesson we'll see the three main verb groups, how to conjugate verbs ending ir and how to know if a word is feminine or masculine

In this lesson we'll look at:

• How to know which words are feminine (and so which are mascaline)
• Verbs that end 'er' and 'ir' like 'comer' and 'venir'

Recapping 'ar' verbs

OK let's just go over how 'ar' verbs change depending on who is involved. We'll use a verb we dont know - "to contaminate".

As always we can find the Spanish verb by:

• looking to see if there is a 'tion' version in English - "contamination"
• removing the 'tion' and adding 'r' gives us 'contaminar - to contaminate

Spanish	English
Contaminar	To contaminate
Contamina	It's contaminating
Contaminan	The contaminate
Contaminas	You (formal) contaminate

So the key sound with 'ar' verbs is always 'a'

• Contaminar
• Contamina
• Contaminan
• Contaminas

Verbs ending 'er' or 'ir'

For both of these groups the key sound is 'e' (as in elephant).

Spanish	English
Vender	To sell
Vendo	I sell / I'm selling
Lo vendo	I'm selling it
Los vendo	I'm selling them

We haven't used 'Vender' before but a useful way to remember it is via the English "Street Vender" which means "Street Seller".

This order of saying "Them I sell" ('los vendo') is tricky at first so its really important until you are more fluent to break it down:

• Who is doing the selling? I am so its 'vendo'
• What am I selling? Them so its 'los'
• Where can 'los' go? This is a changed verb so it must go before the verb.
• 'Los vendo'

Feminine words

OK - before we go any further lets look at this 'los' because it only refers to "them" if those words are masculine. If those words were feminine it would be 'las;

Spanish	English
Las vendo	I'm selling them

Now I'm saying "femine words". It would be slightly easier to say "feminine things". For example 'casa' in Spanish means "house" and it's feminine so we could say "houses are feminine" but its not actually true. As we will see later objects can have different names (like a car can be a 'motor' in English) and those words have different genders.

So its really important here to talk about masculine and feminine word.

As there are no genders in English learning what is masculine and what is feminine in a foreign language is often seen as a right royal pain in the *!*%! But in Spanish there are some rules which means you'll know which is which 95% of the time without having to learn it parrot fashion.

So to start with

all words which end in 'a' are feminine

. 'Casa' ends in 'a' so its feminine.

As always there are exceptions to these rules but better to jump in 95% right from the start rather than struggle with trying to memorize these things.

If we want to say "I'm selling the houses" a few things happen in Spanish.

• the would normally be 'la' for a feminine word but as this is plural we add an 's' - 'las'
• plurals of objects are mainly handled the same way as they are in English ... we add an 's' ... so 'casa' becomes 'casas'

Spanish	English
Vendo las casas	I'm selling the houses
Las vendo	I'm selling them

Now it could start getting a bit confusing here because we are saying 'las' means both "the" (in plural situations) and "them". I remember this by thinking how rappers and the like talk in English - they will say "I sell them houses". Perhaps this came from Spanish, who knows!.

Spotting feminine words

We've already covered the general rule that words ending 'a' are feminine but there are some other tricks as well.

Spanish	English
La casa	The house

'ión' is a feminine ending. All words ending 'ión' are feminine.

Spanish	English
La administración	The administration
La opinión	The opinion
La asosiación	The association
La celebración	The celebration

And you'll notice that in all these cases the last 'o' has an accent. That's a general rule to remember for the written word but it also tells us when pronouncing to put the accent on the end.

All words that end 'ity' in English end in 'idad' in Spanish and they are also feminine

Spanish	English
Diversidad	Diversity
La diversidad	The diversity
La nacionalidad	The nationality
La creatividad	The creativity
La electricidad	The electricity

Now with 'idad' words if you take off the 'idad' you often end up quite close to the word for the object. It doesn't always work but if you're stuck or need to guess its worth a try!

Spanish	English
Electrico	Electric
Generosidad	Generosity
Generoso	Generous

Now these words ending 'o' suggest a male word. For female words we go back to the rule that words ending 'a' are feminine. So if we were talking about a generous thing whose word was feminine.

Spanish	English
Generosa	Generous

If we are talking about more than one thing or person we add an 's'

Spanish	English
Generosos	Generous (them, male)
Generosas	Generous (them, female)

One issue that confuses some learners is what to do in mixed cases. What if we wanted to decribe a group of people as generous when that group is male or female. The rule here is that as soon as one male gets involved you use the masculine - 'generosos'.

You could have a group of 1,000 women and one man and it would still be 'generosos' - very sexist I know but don't shoot the messenger!

OK - let's do some more 'ity' ending English words that you can transfer over to Spanish and words you can guess from them:

Spanish	English
Comunidad	Commnunity
La comunidad	The commnunity
Común	Common

Now your guess for "Common" might have been 'comuno' and that's fine. When speaking in Spanish you would be close enough for someone to understand you and correct you. If you didn't guess, you wouldn't discover and you wouldn't learn and this way you learn much faster.

Spanish	English
Oportunidad	Opportunity
Oportuno	Opportune (masculine word)
Oportuna	Opportune (feminine word)
Claridad	Clarity
Claro	Clear

You'll often here 'claro' on the street as it means "Is that clear?" or "It's clear to me". So you will hear one person talking and the other saying "Claro, claro, claro".

Spanish	English
Personalidad	Personality
Persona	Person
Sinceridad	Sincerity
Sincero	Sincere (masuline word)

Back to 'er' and 'ir' verbs

Or more accurately to 'vender' - to sell.

Spanish	English
Quiero vender	I want to sell
Quiero vender lo	I want to sell it

... and to recap ...

• The key sound with 'ar' verbs is always 'a'
• The key sound with 'ar' and 'ir' verbs is 'e' (as in elephant).

Spanish	English
Vende	he/she/it/you (formal) sells
Lo vende	he/she/it/you (formal) sells it
Vende algo	he/she/it/you (formal) sells something
Venden	they/you (plural) sell
No venden	they/you (plural) are not selling
No lo venden	they/you (plural) are not selling it
Por qué no lo venden	Why aren't they/you (plural) selling it
Me lo venden	they/you (plural) are selling it to me
No me lo venden	they/you (plural) aren't selling it to me
¿Por qué no me lo venden?	Why aren't they/you (plural) selling it to me

• The "not" bit ('no') always comes first
• Then the person ('me')
• Then the thing ('lo')
• Then what is happening ('venden')

Nos - us

The Spanish word for "us" (you and me) is 'nos'

Spanish	English
Nos venden algo	they/you (plural) are selling us something
Nos lo venden	they/you (plural) are selling it to us
No nos lo venden	they/you (plural) are not selling it to us
¿Por qué no nos lo venden?	Why aren't they/you (plural) selling it to us?

Lesson 13: Hacer (to do), qué (what), puedo (I can) and Esperar (I wait/hope)