An acronym

El or la? This is easy since most of the time if the word ends in -a it is feminine and uses la and if the word ends in -o it is masculine and uses el. But what about words like papel, or estación?  One way to remember their gender is through an acronym.

Listen to Marcela explain how she uses the acronym LONERS to remember the gender of nouns.

“If a word ends in l, o, n, e, r, [or] s it’s almost always going to be a masculine word… for example… papel… one common exception to this… are words that end in ión… these words are actually…feminine…so we have la oración…words that end in  -ma, -pa, or -ta are almost always masculine... for example the word mapa… so el mapa… another really common one… it’s el problema… because it ends in ma.”

As Marcela points out, there are exceptions to her strategy, so keep this in mind!