Noun Gender

[Gonzo]

Hello,
I'm having some trouble with figuring out just what gender these nouns are. I read about them having a tendency to be certain genders depending on the ending but there are many that defy these tendencies. I bought the Oxford dictionary and it doesn't tell you what the genders of each noun are! So how can I possibly know what they are? Building new vocabulary in any language will consist of thousands of nouns more than any other other word category - verbs coming next. So trial and error is just too much in my in my opinion. How can I tackle this problem? Thanks

[Babelfish]

Dictionaries without grammatical information suck at least a little bit
Many common basic words have unexpected gender, but other than that, the word ending is a good indicator. A word ending in אַה / אָה (replace א by any consonant) will almost always be feminine, and so will one ending in אֵת / אֶת / אִית / אוּת.
(Don't rely on the plural ending though, there are even more words which take the plural ending of the other gender).

[Requiescat]

Gonzo,
I know this an old thread but I thought I would respond regardless. not too long ago I purchased the "Comprehensive Shilo Pocket Dictionary" which does in fact state the genders for singular and plurals. I bought it just hoping to have something simple to build foundational vocabulary but it has far exceeded my expectations. If you are not going to purchase the Oxford Hebrew Dictionary (the one with stated prepositions etc, but without genders) then in my opinion you should definitely consider this high quality yet inexpensive little dictionary. It has over 30,000 entries and the print is crisp and clear. I hope that is of some use to you.

Regards,
Marcus