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Gender of Nouns

In Spanish, all nouns are either masculine or feminine. These categories are merely grammatical. Note that grammatical gender has nothing to do with a noun's inherent masculinity or femininity. In most cases, it is purely arbitrary.

Consider these two words:

Spanish Word English Equivalent Gender
libro book masculine
revista magazine feminine

Obviously, there is nothing about a book that makes it more masculine than a magazine! As you can see, the gender of these nouns is arbitrary.

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