Question: Why isn't there a male and female Spanish version of the noun "persona" in Spanish? Many other Spanish nouns referring to people have this dichotomy: "medico/a", "enfermero/a", and "filósofo/a" to name just a few.
There are male/female equivalents for many nouns that refer to people in Spanish: medico/a, enfermero/a, filósofo/a. Since Spanish can function to identify gender when nouns refer to humans, it makes sense to me to have male and female versions of the noun "persona". In my view, these could very well be "person/a".
To me, saying in Spanish, "Miguel es una persona buena." does not take advantage of the opportunity that Spanish affords to distinguish noun genders by ending the words with either an "o" or nothing if the person referred to is a male, and an "a" if the person referred to is female. To me, it would be better to say the same sentence this way: "Miguel es un person bueno.", and it would certainly not be violating any Spanish grammar rule(s) that I know of.
I know this is not a big deal, but I wonder just what would be so wrong with saying "Miguel es un person (or persono) bueno."? I know that all languages have their quirks and those learning foreign languages usually learn to put up with such quirks without problems just like native speakers do.
These questions also come to mind when I consider this issue: (1) Is there a term which refers to noun pairs in Spanish like "enfermero, enfermera", and "medico, medica"? (2) Does the origin of the noun affect whether or not there exists, in Spanish, male/female equivalents for any given noun?
I know that the most common response when a question like this is submitted is "That's just the way it is", but I am hoping to find some general rule of thumb that applies here - a rule that might shed some light on this for me. Thanks!