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My explanation of gendered nouns

I have noticed that there is some confusion of what gendered nouns are. I have decided to write an explanation of how I understand how the Spanish think when talking about gendered nouns.
First of all, a noun can be thought of as something that you can put the word "the" in front of for example, the car, the woman, the emotion etc.
Spanish has many words that can change in gender. Depending on the end of the word, a word can sound like it should be talked about as if it was a man or a woman. Let's look at some English words first in order to further explain what I mean:

Masculine	Feminine
Actor	Actress
Heir	Heiress
Waiter	Waitress

So as you can see, words ending in an -r sound as though it belongs to a man's group of words and -ess belongs to a woman's group of words so in a funny way, the word factor sounds like it should be under the Masculine column and the word fitness sounds like it belongs under the Feminine column. It is clear that these words have nothing to do with a man or a woman. You can talk about the fitness of a man or a woman but if we had two words for 'the' in English (one masculine and one feminine) then we would say something like 'el factor' and 'la fitness'.
This is also why the Spanish change all their words that are able to change in gender and number to reflect upon the thing that they are talking about and not who is talking for example, a woman can say:

Tengo una mesa = I have a table
Tengo un coche = I have a car
Tengo un coche rojo = I have a red car
Tengo dos coches rojos = I have two red cars

So the Spanish have in mind the gender and number of the thing that they are talking about regardless of who is speaking and change those words accordingly. The word "mesa" sounds as though it should be talked about as though it was a woman because most (NOT ALL) words that end in an 'a' are feminine so you use una mesa.

Incidentally, I have made my own rules for guessing the gender of a noun. I call it the Lorry Rule. If a noun ends in l, o, r or y then it TENDS to be masculine. If it doesn't then it TENDS to be feminine. There are lots of exceptions e.g. un día etc. Words ending in an 'e' are a bit tricky to predict. Also words (of Greek origin) ending in -ma TEND to be masculine (some exceptions: la cama, la forma and la lima). It is not a perfect rule but do not worry about it. It doesn't matter if you make mistakes; mistakes are inevitable for both novice and expert alike. The important thing are:

You enjoy using the language
You are understood

So go ahead and play with Spanish!

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[ESPAÑOL]

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