In Spanish, grammatical gender is a linguistic feature that affects different types of words and how they agree with each other.
However, Spanish differs from other Romance languages, like French and Italian, in its kinship terms.
For instance, the Spanish words for "uncle" and "aunt" are tío and tía respectively, while in French, they are oncle and tante.
Similarly, the Spanish words for "brother" and "sister" are hermano and hermana, whereas in Italian, they are fratello and sorella.
Likewise, nouns of Greek origin ending in -ma (drama 'play', problema 'problem') or -ta (planeta 'planet', profeta 'prophet') are masculine.
To specify sex, a modifying word is added, with no change of gender: el delfín macho ('the male dolphin'), el delfín hembra ('the female dolphin'), la comadreja macho, la comadreja hembra (male and female weasels respectively).
This was noted by Andrés Bello in his work on the grammar of Latin American Spanish.
Bello also notes that words such as nada, poco, algo, and mucho can be used as neuters in some contexts.
However, a word like Latin iste had the neuter istud; the former became este and the latter became esto in Spanish.
These include the grammatical custom (inherited from Latin) of using a grammatically masculine plural for a group containing at least one male; the use of the masculine definite article for infinitives (e.g. el amar, not la amar); and the permissibility of using Spanish male pronouns for female referents but not vice versa (e.g. el que includes women, la que does not include men).
It has been occasionally analyzed as too similar to padre ("father"), causing the coining of "monomarental" to mean "single-mother".