Noun suffixes: -ción, -dad, -miento

A Spanish noun suffix tells you what the noun means and its gender. Feminine suffixes are pink with a double underline, masculine blue with a single one:

• la construcción - the construction (from construir)
• el movimiento - the movement (from mover)

Spanish noun suffixes at a glance

The whole system on one screen. The first four rows do most of the work.

-ción and -sión: the action of a verb

-ción turns a verb into the noun for its action or its result. Every noun in -ción is feminine.

-sión is the same suffix after some stems, and just as feminine: la televisión.

• Fue una decisión difícil. - It was a difficult decision.

English -tion words usually come across whole: nation is la nación, relation is la relación. That shortcut has its own page, Spanish cognate patterns.

-dad and -tad: the quality of an adjective

-dad (often -idad) turns an adjective into the quality it names. Every noun in -dad or -tad is feminine.

Notice the stem shifting: feliz becomes felic-, posible becomes posibil-. English -ty maps onto -dad: university is la universidad.

• La libertad es importante. - Freedom is important.

-miento: the masculine action noun

Here the gender flips. -miento also turns a verb into the noun for its action or result, but it is masculine.

Nothing in a verb tells you whether it takes -ción or -miento, so learn the noun whole. The ending still settles the article:

• Fue un buen pensamiento. - It was a good thought.