In other cases, meaning takes precedence: the noun "communist" is masculine when it refers or could refer to a man, even though it ends with . Nouns in Spanish and Portuguese, as in the other Romance languages such as Italian and French, generally follow the gender of the Latin words from which they are derived. When nouns deviate from the rules for gender, there is usually an etymological explanation: ("problem") is masculine in Spanish because it was derived from a Greek noun of the neuter gender, whereas ("photo") and ("broadcast signal") are feminine because they are clippings of and respectively, both grammatically feminine nouns.
In other cases, meaning takes precedence: the noun "commu,nist" is masculine when it refers or could refer to a man even though it ends with . Nouns in Spanish and Portuguese, as in the other Romance languages such as Italian and French, generally follow the gender of the Latin words from which they are derived. When nouns deviate from the rules for gender, there is usually an etymological explanation: ("problem") is masculine in Spanish because it was derived from a Greek noun of the neuter gender, whereas ("photo") and ("broadcast signal") are feminine because they are clippings of and respectively, both grammatically feminine nouns.