Gender of Nouns מין השם

Modern Hebrew has masculine and feminine only. A dictionary entry marks the gender because it is not always visible on the noun itself. You need the gender before you can put an adjective after the noun or conjugate a present-tense verb that describes it. Inanimate things still have a gender; it is a grammar class, not biology.

The usual feminine marks are a final ה and a final ת. The ת often shows up as ־ית or ־ת on nouns such as מכונית and דלת. Masculine nouns are typically unmarked. These endings are strong clues, not proofs: you still store exceptions as vocabulary.

For humans and many animals, gender follows sex: תלמיד is a male student and תלמידה is a female student. Pair forms are worth learning together. Mixed groups of people take masculine plural agreement in the standard language. Job titles often have both a masculine and a feminine form.

Adjectives copy the noun: בית גדול but דירה גדולה. Present-tense verbs do the same when the noun is the subject: הספר נופל, הדלת נופלת. The definite object marker and the numbers you will meet later also care about gender. Getting the noun class right on day one saves unlearning later.