Spanish Video Lessons – El Radio – La Radio

We’ve all heard how English is one of the most difficult languages to learn. Spanish, on the other hand, is relatively easy for most people to learn. If nothing else, the rules of pronunciation are certainly easier to follow than those in English! Of course, while Spanish may be much easier to pick up, it still has plenty of little idiosyncrasies that can confuse even the advanced student.

One of the more difficult things to master when learning Spanish is an understanding of the gender difference in words – nouns are either feminine or masculine. Generally speaking, the feminine words end with “–a” and the masculine nouns end with ”–o”. But there are just enough exceptions to the rule to give you headache! For example “ballena” (whale) ends with an “a” and is used for both male and female whales.

That’s why I was really happy to come across this video from WebSpanish; it helped clear up a confusion I have had for a long time. While the word “radio” appears to be a masculine word, I’ve heard it said both “el radio” (masculine) and “la radio” (feminine). I was really confused, because I didn’t understand why the same word would be used with two different articles – and why sometimes it would be masculine and other times feminine. Not only does the video show how to use the word correctly, it gives a clear explanation of how to know when to use “la radio” and “el radio”.