# Masculine nouns take the article 'el' for singular and 'los' for plural

* el hombre
* los hombres

# Feminine nouns take the article 'la' for singular and 'las' for plural

* la mujer
* las mujeres

# Many nouns that end in -o are masculine
# Many nouns that end in -a are feminine
# Some nouns are exceptional (Noun verb sentence)

* La chica nada.
* The girl swims.
* nadar means to swim, and to float
o A Spanish word may apply to several similar (but not identical) English words
+ Both swim and float put us in the water but one has arm and leg motions, and the other doesn't. All nadar tells us is that person is in the water. Of course, you can argue that most of the time swimming takes place when a person is in the water, so there is a probability aspect to consider. Can you think of English _expression_s that don't really explain what is happening, so we make assumptions?
+ So far my favorite is 'lanzar', the multipurpose war verb that can be used to throw stones and launch intercontinental ballistic missles. In your dictionary you may find as many as ten entries for this verb.
o Sometimes the Spanish conjugation of a verb may be identical to a different word or words in Spanish:
+ The word 'nada' may also be 'la nada', the nothingness, the void; a pronoun meaning 'nothing'; an adverb meaning 'not very' or 'not at all', or it could be part of the _expression_ 'de nada' which means "you're welcome, don't mention it."
+ Don't panic though. My computer translater program has problems with this but I don't, and I think that is because you and I can develope a feel of if the next word we read should be a noun or a verb, etc.