Every single noun in the Hebrew language has a gender.

This means that words for people, animals, objects, and ideas are automatically assigned as either masculine or feminine.

Unlike English, Hebrew doesn’t have a neutral “it” pronoun for inanimate objects.

You must know the gender of a noun to speak Hebrew correctly.

The gender of a noun changes how you use adjectives, numbers, and verbs in a sentence.

Fortunately, there are simple rules to help you identify whether a Hebrew word is masculine or feminine.

Why Hebrew gender matters

Hebrew is a highly gendered language.

When you use a noun, all the other words connected to it must match its gender.

If you use a feminine noun, the adjective describing it must also take a feminine form.

Verbs must also match the gender of the subject performing the action.

This means that learning the gender of a word is just as important as learning the word itself.

For example, the word for “good” is tov (masculine) or tova (feminine).

Here’s how you describe a “good boy” using masculine agreement:

Here’s how you describe a “good girl” using feminine agreement:

How to identify feminine nouns

You can usually guess a noun’s gender just by looking at its ending.

Most feminine nouns in Hebrew end with a specific sound and letter.

If a word ends with the letter hey (ה) and makes an “ah” sound, it’s almost always feminine.

If a word ends with the letter tav (ת) and makes an “et”, “it”, or “ut” sound, it’s also highly likely to be feminine.

Here are some common feminine nouns that follow these rules:

How to identify masculine nouns

Masculine nouns are the default form in Hebrew.

If a word doesn’t end with a hey (ה) or a tav (ת), it’s usually masculine.

This means that the vast majority of words ending in a hard consonant sound are masculine nouns.

Here are some common examples of masculine nouns:

Common exceptions to the gender rules

Language rules almost always have exceptions.

Some Hebrew words look masculine but are actually feminine.

A major group of these exceptions includes body parts that come in pairs.

Words like eyes (eynaim), ears (oznaim), hands (yadaim), and legs (raglaim) don’t have standard feminine endings, but they’re entirely feminine.

Other common feminine words that lack a typical feminine ending include ir (city) and shemesh (sun).

On the flip side, some masculine words end in a hey (ה) and look completely feminine.

The most famous example is laila (night), which ends in an “ah” sound but is treated as a masculine noun.

Hebrew plurals and gender

Making a noun plural in Hebrew also depends heavily on its gender.

Masculine nouns generally become plural by adding the suffix -im (ים) to the end of the word.

Feminine nouns generally become plural by dropping their final vowel and adding the suffix -ot (ות).

However, there are tricky words that break these plural rules.

Some masculine nouns actually take the feminine -ot ending in their plural form.

For example, the masculine word chalon (window) becomes chalonot (windows).

Even though the plural looks feminine, the word is still grammatically masculine.

Any adjectives attached to chalonot must still take the masculine plural form.

Some feminine nouns do the exact opposite and take the masculine -im ending.

For example, the feminine word mila (word) becomes milim (words).