Spanish Words with No Gender

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There is a 'third gender' in Spanish. Well, maybe not really a gender, but a third noun classification, and that's the 'neutral' or non-gender noun. Words belonging to this category can be either male or female, depending on the actual gender of the noun being referred to. They don't change endings like the words we discussed in the last post.

Let's look at some examples below:

Agente [ah- hen-te] ‘agent’
Adolescente [ah-doh- le-sen-teh] ‘adolescent’
Artista [ar-tees-tah] ‘artist’
Canguro [kan-goo-ro] kangaroo
Ciclista [see-klees-ta] ‘cyclist’
Cliente [klee- yen-teh] ‘client, customer’
Especialista [es-peh-sya- lees-tah] ‘specialist’
Estudiante [es-tu-dyan-te] ‘student’
Gerente [he-ren-te] ‘manager’
Periodista [pehr-ee-o-dis-ta] ‘journalist’
Policia [po-li-see-yah] ‘police officer’
Representante [re-pre-sen-tan-teh] ‘representative’
Taxista [taks-ee-stah] taxi driver

Just because the words themselves don't change based on gender, doesn't mean that Spanish doesn't have a way to let people know what gender you're actually talking about! Taking the first word on that list 'artista' - If I'm talking about say... Pablo Picasso, I would say 'el artista', with the article 'el' being a masculine modifier. On the other hand, if I'm talking about Mary Cassatt, she would be 'la artista', with the article 'la' letting everyone know that she is clearly a woman.