Two questions
 

1) Is using el or la before a noun just mostly a matter of memorization (unless the word makes it sort of obvious) or is there some trick to it?

2) Is there a Verbarrator 1.1 or 1.2 for the Mac machine?

Never heard of the verbarrator, but most "la" words end in either "a" "ción" "dad" while most "el" words end in "o"


La publicidad
El gato
La construcción

there are very few words that end in "o" and are feminine" such and la radio, but don´t worry about those you´ll come to learn them , the others usually follow those basic rules I wrote above

Both la radio and el radio exist, but are different words. And you certainly want to call the Pope el papa, not the Potato (la papa).
In my opinion, you should learn the article along with the word. In some cases, it's best to learn the plural article instead of the singular (el agua, but las aguas (agua is feminine, but a masculine singular article is used for euphony's sake)). Others like that: el águila (las águilas), el aula (las aulas)

There are many exceptions to the main rules taught in most classrooms.
Here's a site that lists the rules (and gives exceptions to those rules). No one site lists all the exceptions.

You guys are most helpful! Thank you for your responses. I feel like I'm at the crawling stage now but am sure having fun and hope to up and walking soon. I'll be back with more questions but for now if anyone knows if Verbarrator is available for the Mac I'd sure appreciate it. Hasta luego! :)

These acronyms should help. I use them to teach my Spanish classes.

LONERS --Whenever a word ends in L or O or N or E or R or S, it will be masculine.

Examples: El mandil; El gato; El don; etc

dIONza --Whenever a word ends in D or -ION (all together) or Z or A, it will be feminine.


Examples: La verdad; La acción; La perfección; etc

***This rule works out about 95% of the time ;)

Acronyms are always helpful. Thanks for that!

Just to make it for the 5%: ;)

Mano -> Feminine
Imagen -> Feminine
Especie, planicie, parte, constante... -> Feminine
Azúcar -> Both feminine and masculine
Abad -> Masculine
Ion, camión -> Masculine
Pez, rapaz, cáliz, arroz -> Masculine
Problema, teorema, idioma... -> Masculine


Btw: Most plurals end with an "s", which are not to be confused with words whose singular ends in "s". These are normally made with a verb and a noun in plural; since we don't have neuter gender, we use the masculine and the word becomes invariable in either singular or plural:
· el/los rompecabezas
· el/los portafolios
· el/los sacapuntas
· el/los parteaguas
· el/los cascanueces ...