Hey Ern Jun, So everything, all nouns in Spanish have a gender (feminine/masculine) whether they are alive things or inanimate objects, including abstract concepts! What the sentence above is saying is that there is no ''rule'' to ''predict/assign'' a gender to something. It is pretty arbitrary and most of the time you just have to rely on practice and memory. Except of course, in the case of living things, where the grammatical gender is the same as the biological gender. Living things: EL gato, EL perro, EL hombre. LA gata, LA perra, LA mujer. inanimate objects: EL libro, EL papel, EL celular. LA mesa, LA fresa, LA cama. abstract concepts: EL amor, EL capitalismo. LA idea, LA teoria, LA gravedad. Hope that helps. :)

Well, you have to divide the concept of "gender" in grammar. Lápiz (pencil) is masculine, and "pluma" (pen) is feminine, but there is nothing masculine about a pencil and there is nothing feminine about a pen... they are just categories in grammatical terms... it has nothing to do with living creatures. "Persona" (person) is a feminine noun... If I talk about myself, even though I am a man, I have to say "soy una persona honesta", (I am an honest person), The gender of the noun "persona" cannot change to masculine just because I am a man. I am not less man because I say that "soy una persona". Grammatical gender is just a category nothing to do with sex in humans or animals.

Only because. There are some rules about ending of the words....but with a lot of exceptions... Words ending -a are usually femenine...but EL sofá, EL sistema, EL problema, EL papá TIP: when you learn new words, learn with article...