# Spanish lesson needed: genders **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 2, 2015, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067 "2015-07-02T17:52:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2015, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/1 "2015-07-02T17:52:33Z")
I know many words in Spanish, not really enough to form sentences but my ears pop up when I hear lots of random words spoken. I know a little bit about the gender suffixes, but I don’t know why something is required to be male or female. I haven’t been curious enough to ask about it until now. I know “los banos” means “the bathroom” and those are male gendered. I know that if something is female, the article is “la” instead of “los”. Everywhere I’ve heard los banos being used by Spanish speakers, it’s always male as shown. But this morning I overheard our housekeepers talking and one of them said “la bana”. Female!? So when or why would you use the female version? ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2015, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/2 "2015-07-02T18:00:57Z")
Los baños would be the bathrooms. If there’s only one, it’s el baño. I’ve never heard of someone using la baña to mean bathroom. That doesn’t mean that people don’t but I’d assume I misheard or it’s slang or something. edit: grammatical gender can be confusing and it doesn’t help that we associate it with biological sexes. With the exception of gender-inflected words like profesor/profesora, it’s probably easiest to pretend they’re Type A and Type B or something, instead of masculine and feminine. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2015, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/3 "2015-07-02T18:12:55Z")
Native Spanish speaker here – “baña” as a noun does not exist. However, it is a form of the verb “bañar” (=“to give a bath”. If you want to say “to take a bath” you should use the reflexive form of the verb, “bañarse”). I can imagine of a situation where “la baña” could be correct, but then you would not be dealing with an article and a noun. “Baña” is the 3rd. person singular of the present indicative of the verb “bañar”: baña=“he/she gives \ a bath”. If that is the case, then “la”, in this sentence, is not an article but a pronoun: feminine direct object (=“her”). As you know, in Spanish usually you leave the subject out if it is a pronoun, because the relevant information is in the verb itself. Taking this into account, “la baña” then means “\ gives her a bath”. **JcWoman** , would this meaning be plausible within the context of whatever your housekeepers were talking about? ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2015, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/4 "2015-07-02T18:19:41Z")
I don’t know what they were talking about, since I don’t know even have enough to understand full sentences. But from context: they were organizing themselves on the second floor where the bedrooms and bathrooms are. It’s likely the one lady was telling the other one to clean the bathtub first? Or maybe she was saying that I needed to take a bath? LOL! (Actually I’m not the paranoid type who assumes everything I don’t understand is snarking about me.) But “la bana” jumped out at me, like “la puerta” did when they first came in. The one lady seems to act as a team lead or something, directing the other one what to do. Is it also possible that they used the feminine gender because it was one woman talking to another one? Or, instead of “\ gives her a bath” maybe she was saying “\ clean her bath”, e.g. clean the lady’s bath? ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2015, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/5 "2015-07-02T18:29:43Z")
> [@JcWoman](#): > > I don’t know what they were talking about, since I don’t know even have enough to understand full sentences. But from context: they were organizing themselves on the second floor where the bedrooms and bathrooms are. It’s likely the one lady was telling the other one to clean the bathtub first? Or maybe she was saying that I needed to take a bath? LOL! (Actually I’m not the paranoid type who assumes everything I don’t understand is snarking about me.) But “la bana” jumped out at me, like “la puerta” did when they first came in. The one lady seems to act as a team lead or something, directing the other one what to do. > > Is it also possible that they used the feminine gender because it was one woman talking to another one? Or, instead of “\ gives her a bath” maybe she was saying “\ clean her bath”, e.g. clean the lady’s bath? No, they would not change the gender of a word because they were women talking to each other. If she used the word “baña”, then she absolutely, positively was using the verb. However – could it be that you misheard and she actually said “la bañera”? Because “bañera” exists as a word and means “bathtub”. If they were assigning duties, it might be perfectly possible for one lady to say something like “\ the bathtub”. ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2015, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/6 "2015-07-02T19:15:45Z")
> [@JoseB](#): > > No, they would not change the gender of a word because they were women talking to each other. > > If she used the word “baña”, then she absolutely, positively was using the verb. > > However – could it be that you misheard and she actually said “la bañera”? Because “bañera” exists as a word and means “bathtub”. If they were assigning duties, it might be perfectly possible for one lady to say something like “\ the bathtub”. Sounds plausible. Maybe she trailed off the last syllable as many English speakers do when we’re talking to each other casually… 😃 Thanks for all the help, everyone! Bit by bit I learn a little more Spanish. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/7 "2015-07-03T02:21:48Z")
Could “la baña” be a neologism (or maybe Spanglish) for “women’s bathroom”? ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/8 "2015-07-03T03:41:27Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Could “la baña” be a neologism (or maybe Spanglish) for “women’s bathroom”? No. ---
**Author:** ![Bad\_News\_Baboon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@Bad\_News\_Baboon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bad_News_Baboon)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/9 "2015-07-03T04:50:42Z")
Maybe one was telling the other she had sleep\* (lagaña) in her eyes. \*why don’t we have a better word for this? Sleep sounds silly and my daughter’s choice of “eye boogers” isn’t so great, either. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/10 "2015-07-03T04:55:19Z")
Rheum is the clinical term. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/11 "2015-07-03T09:50:22Z")
> [@Bad\_News\_Baboon](#): > > Maybe one was telling the other she had sleep\* (lagaña) in her eyes. > \*why don’t we have a better word for this? Sleep sounds silly and my daughter’s choice of “eye boogers” isn’t so great, either. lEgaña ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/12 "2015-07-03T09:59:09Z")
There is an actual meaning for _baña_ as a noun, but it wouldn’t be very polite in this case. I do hope you don’t treat the cleaning ladies badly enough to earn it 😃 [baña](http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=ba%C3%B1a): a pond or other location where wild animals bathe I expect the actual word would be _bañera_, as **JoseB** proposed. Oh, and correction on myself: [lagaña](http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=laga%C3%B1a) is also a valid spelling! ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/13 "2015-07-03T19:04:39Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > I expect the actual word would be _bañera_, as **JoseB** proposed. This brings up a question I’ve had, Spanish-ignorant that I am. What is the meaning of the suffix -ero or -era at the end of a word? And if I see words ending in -dero or -dera, is the d part of the suffix, or the suffix still just -ero or -era? I have an idea, but I only know a scant two or three words with this ending, so not a whole lot of data points to works with. – Atascadero: Literally, “place where you get stuck”, i.e., swamp, mire, bog. – Pescadero: Fish place? As I understand it, the marketplace where fishermen bring their daily catch to sell. (Both of the above are names of cities in California. Yeah, “A place where you get stuck.”) So does this suffix create a noun meaning “the place or venue where some activity happens” ? Other examples? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/14 "2015-07-03T20:59:40Z")
Fish: _Pescado_ Fisherman: _Pescador_ Fish seller: _Pescadero_ Cow: _Vaca_ Cowboy;: _Vaquero_ (c -\> qu to preserve the hard “K” sound) (hence the English word “Buckaroo”). Bread: _Pan_ Baker: _Panadero_ “_You no soy marinero_” I am not a sailor. ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_Charles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/839c29/32.png) [@Greg\_Charles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Greg_Charles)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2015, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/15 "2015-07-03T21:59:26Z")
I’m not a native, or even a fluent speaker, but here’s what I know (or think I know) about gender in Spanish: – In Spanish, like most Romance languages, nouns have a gender. Nouns ending in o are almost always masculine, and nouns ending in a (and -dad I think) are almost always feminine. – Adjectives don’t have gender but if they end with o/a the ending changes to match the noun being modified. E.g. la cerveza negra, but el libro negro. Adjectives not ending with o/a don’t change. – Nouns ending in o/a can change if the thing actually does have a biological gender, so el perro is the male dog, and la perra is the female dog. On the other pollo is chicken and polla is penis, so … yeah. – “the” for masculine nouns is almost always el, or los for plurals, and la/las for feminine. a/an is un for masculine and una for feminine. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/16 "2015-07-04T00:01:57Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > What is the meaning of the suffix -ero or -era at the end of a word? > > And if I see words ending in -dero or -dera, is the d part of the suffix, or the suffix still just -ero or -era? “Linked to, having a relationship to”. _Pescadero_ or _pescatero_, related to _pescado_ (a fish that’s been fished). The place where they work, _pescadería_. _Atascadero_ comes from _atascado_, stuck. In both cases, the -d- isn’t part of the final suffix, it’s part of an intermediate derivation. Both _pescado_ and _atascado_ originate as participles, which in Spanish is the verbal form used as an adjective. _Pez_ (fish, the animal) -\> _pescar_ (to fish) -\> _pescado_ (fished; a fish that’s been fished for food) -\> _pescador_ (fisherman), _pescadería_ (fishmonger’s), _pescadero_ (fishmonger). _Tasco_ (a broken piece of stiff material, the sort of stuff that tends to become stuck in pipes) -\> _atascar_ (to clog) and _atascarse_ (to become stuck in place; to become clogged)\* -\> _atascado_ (clogged, stuck) -\> _atascadero_ (place that gets clogged when things get stuck in it). Adding to **Greg Charles** ’ information, and completing his last point – if a singular (f) noun begins by a-, it takes the masculine articles _un_ and _el_; this is for ease of pronunciation. _El águila_, not _la águila_. - Trash _atasca_ the pipe, it makes it clogged. The pipe _se atasca_, it becomes clogged. People who have started a task but can’t figure out how to continue _se atascan_ too, their brain clogs. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/17 "2015-07-04T00:07:46Z")
> [@Greg\_Charles](#): > > I’m not a native, or even a fluent speaker, but here’s what I know (or think I know) about gender in Spanish: > > – In Spanish, like most Romance languages, nouns have a gender. Nouns ending in o are almost always masculine, and nouns ending in a (and -dad I think) are almost always feminine. Nouns ending in “a” that are derived from Greek are usually masculine. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/18 "2015-07-04T02:04:47Z")
From the absolutely minimal Spanish I ever learned, I seem to recall that verbs are not gendered and don’t modify their form to match the gender of the subject. Is that correct? What about French? Are French verbs gendered? Hebrew verbs are, in most of the forms or “structures”. ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/19 "2015-07-04T09:36:02Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > From the absolutely minimal Spanish I ever learned, I seem to recall that verbs are not gendered and don’t modify their form to match the gender of the subject. Is that correct? > > What about French? Are French verbs gendered? > > Hebrew verbs are, in most of the forms or “structures”. The past participle of a Spanish verb (which, as **Nava** said, can act as an adjective) is gendered when acting as an adjective: “I am tired” (man) = “estoy cansado”. For a woman it would be “estoy cansada”. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2015, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-lesson-needed-genders/724067/20 "2015-07-04T13:32:15Z")
And yes, the same happens in French; verbal forms are generally non-gendered, personal forms are affected by number, and the participle (which as one of the impersonal forms is non-gendered, non-numbered) becomes gendered and numbered when used as an adjective. _Je ne suis pas mariée_, _no estoy casada_: I am not married. _Ils sont mariées_, _están casados_: they are married.