The Gender of Spanish Adjectives

Spanish, like English, uses adjectives. Adjectives are words that describe, identify or quantify a noun. In this article, we are going to learn more about the gender of Spanish adjectives.

In Spanish, all nouns have a gender. Therefore, adjectives referring to a noun must agree with (have the same gender as) the noun it describes: masculine nouns must have masculine adjectives and feminine nouns must have feminine adjectives.

Gender of Spanish Adjectives

One aspect of the Spanish grammar that often poses a challenge for learners is the gender agreement of adjectives. In Spanish, if a noun is masculine, the adjective describing it must also be masculine, and vice versa for feminine nouns. So, now let’s review the gender of Spanish adjectives.

Adjectives Ending in –o

Many adjectives you will encounter in Spanish will end with an –o. These are the masculine forms of the adjectives. For feminine nouns, change the final –o into an –a.

In English the adjective is invariable. However, in Spanish adjectives need to be changed so that they agree with the noun they are describing. Let’s see some examples.

More Adjectives Endings

Now that you know how to change adjectives that end in –o to their feminine form, you should know that there are quite a few other adjectives that end with other letters.

Adjectives Ending in –or

Some adjectives end in –or such as trabajador (hard-working) or hablador (talkative). Add an –a to these adjectives to form its feminine.

Adjectives Ending in –e, –a or consonant

Some adjectives end in –e, –a or –ista, or consonant (-l, –s, –n…). These adjectives can be used with either masculine or feminine nouns, so their endings do not change. For example, verde (green) can describe both a masculine singular noun and a feminine one without changing its ending.

Exercises

In this article about the gender of Spanish adjectives, we have seen that some adjectives have different forms for masculine and feminine, while others have a single form that applies to both genders. Now let’s practice the gender of Spanish adjectives with the following exercises.