As you know, in Spanish every noun has an article. The article of a noun does not necesarily have to do with the gender of a person; even if it is a pencil it will have an article.
Of course, the nouns which are used for humans have articles as well. For instance (la) madre is mother and (el) padre is father. Because mother indicates a female person, its article is the feminine “la” and similarly the article for the father is the masculine “el”.
Many feminine nouns end in “a” in Spanish and many masculine nouns end in “o”. Such as
- (el) hijo and (la) hija, which mean son and daugther respectively. .
When making plurals from these words an “s” is attached to the singular form. So,
- (los) hijos and (las) hijas are sons and daugthers respectively.
There is a point worth to mention here. While hijas certainly mean sisters, hijos can mean brothers or sisters and brothers. This kind of logic applies to all kinds of groups consisting of human beings. For example
- The subject pronoun “nosotros” means we. It can refer to a group of men and also a group of both genders. But it can never refer to a group of only women. In the latter case, one should use nosotras. Similarly, vosotros means “you”. But use it only for a group of men and both genders. For a group of only women, use vosotras.
To sum up, the plural forms ending in “-os” are for men and women/men. And those that end in “-as” are for women only.
