Abstract
This paper challenges the prevalent misconception among many students that the grammatical gender system of Spanish is transparent (i.e., that the ending of a noun is a clear indication of gender, -o nouns are masculine, -a nouns are feminine). Data concerning the number of exceptions in gender assignment in Spanish is presented along with samples of student production. The goal is not to solve the pedagogical problem, but rather to situate the problem of gender assignment in Spanish in a morphosyntactic context that has not been addressed in textbooks or the pedagogical literature. Gender agreement mistakes are not critical and, in most cases, do not obscure the meaning of a sentence enough to inhibit communication. Nonetheless, gender is still a feature that affects everything at a morphosyntactic level, and therefore these errors cannot be ignored. They become distracting noise in written and oral production.
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