Why is problema masculine

Why is it un problema and not una problema? Table of Contents. To share with friends. Just leave your email address with us and we will be happy to keep you informed. English Nederlands English Deutsch. Log in. What are you looking for? Languages , Spanish. How to remember the exceptions Spanish is fairly consistent and there are not many exceptions to this rule.

Related topics. In english there is no gender in words. You can say teacher for both sexs. Quite often irregular nouns like problema come from Greek, and despite ending with an "a" they are masculine. Idioma is another. A hint I liked that somebody posted here: words ending in "ma" are masculine and words ending in "dad" are feminine But 'llama' ends in 'ma' and it is femenine not the conjugation of llamar, i mean llama the animal and llama the fire flame.

Also 'flema' a fluid that you have when you get flu is femenine. The rule is great because a lot of words match that ends in 'ma' and are masculine, but I think ones should use it with careful because those counter examples. It is not really true, for example, the word "cama" is feminine and you have to say "una cama", no "un cama". Other example, the word "maldad" is feminine and you have to use "la maldad" or "una obra de maldad". That is not a counter example: the tip says that words ending in "dad" are feminine.

The good news is that you can either use the tip and remember the exceptions or ignore the tip altogether. About the 1st tip, i think a great idea is crossing with the tip that 'SenorDustin' gives in this same thread but above. Read more comments. Several Spanish words with Greek origin, which end in 'ma', are masculine.

Seems to stem from the fact that these words were once neuter in gender, but became masculine when the number of genders in Spanish was reduced to 2. Not all the words ending with - a are feminine. There are also exceptions like that one. Highly-rated answerer.