I think that learning if an object is female or male is the hardest part so far. There seems to be no logic to why certain things are male and others female.
2007-07-27 17:08:31 · 9 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
You will be understood, but you will always sound like you speak the language very poorly.
A trick than can help you, is to learn the article as if it were part of the word. For example, in Spanish, instead of memorizing the word "casa" for house, memorize the word as "la-casa." "El-perro" for dog instead of "perro," etc. Since you have to memorize the word anyway, it really is not much harder to memorize the extra syllable at the beginning. Then all you have to do is remember that words with "la" are feminine and words with "el" are masculine.
Don't skip this part because even though you will be understood, as you learn more you will probably decide that you want to sound more fluent, and if you have not been learning the genders as you go then you will have to start from scratch - memorizing all the genders just as you had to memorize all the words (although it's true that most words that end with -a are feminine and most words that end with -o are masculine). If you can learn both at once, with just this little extra syllable at the beginning of each word to help you remember, it's not really much extra effort.
Good luck!
2007-07-27 20:33:37 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋
There are some words in Spanish and Portuguese that don't follow the rules for masculine and feminine.
I think most fluent speakers know what you are talking about.
I think the hardest part is understanding the pronoun agreement and conjugating irregular verbs.
2007-07-28 00:18:26 · answer #2 · answered by Laughing Libra 6 · 2⤊ 2⤋
A dress in Spanish is el vestido (male)
A tie in Spanish is la corbata (female)
No there is no logic. Be careful to learn each noun's gender as you learn the word as it will be very difficult to relearn it.
2007-07-28 00:41:37 · answer #3 · answered by CelloGirl 2 · 1⤊ 2⤋
No, they will probably understand you. But it does sound funny.
Some words can change the meaning when used as male or female, so in that case there can be confusion.
.
2007-07-28 01:51:13 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
That's the hardest part to me too, but I 've found that if you make a mistake and say la instead of el, le, or il,
they still understand you.
If I don't know, I kind of say something halfway between, like I can't remember if it's
la voiture or le voiture, so I just say
L'voiture.
It gets complicated when you have to make everything agree and use pronouns and indirect and direct object pronouns,
2007-07-28 00:14:14 · answer #5 · answered by topink 6 · 5⤊ 2⤋
Feminine or masculine, that is the question.
Anyway, mistakes in gender can result in ill agreement with articles, adjectives, participles, etc. But it does not affect meanings most of the time.
2007-07-28 02:46:33 · answer #6 · answered by Languewizard 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I found that the best ways to memorize noun gender were:
1. to list the words in three columns divided by gender - masculine on the left, neuter in the middle, feminine on the right
2. to color-code the words with masculine being blue, neuter being green, and feminine being red.
Then, when I needed to remember the gender of a noun, I'd just try to visualize my vocab sheet in my head and remember where the word was located on it or what color it was written in on my flashcard.
2007-07-28 01:06:10 · answer #7 · answered by ClassyInCoach 5 · 0⤊ 2⤋
Gender is the most difficult thing in these languages but doesn't affect at all the meaning of the nouns.
Just don't pay attention to them...
2007-07-28 00:12:37 · answer #8 · answered by DIDIUS 4 · 2⤊ 5⤋
you are just stupid
2007-07-28 00:10:28 · answer #9 · answered by chivas 1 · 3⤊ 6⤋