|
The word bebé is a masculine noun, no matter the actual sex of the infant.
Its definite article is el. Its indefinite article is un.
The word este is a masculine demonstrative pronoun. It was correctly used in your language course, because demonstrative pronouns must match gender.
Don't confuse sex (gender) with Spanish noun gender. Spanish noun gender should be thought of as noun type. There are two types of nouns in Spanish.
There is no noun gender in English. Using masculine and feminine as English labels for the Spanish noun types was a bad idea. We English speakers try to associate every object with a gender. That doesn't work very well, especially in a language where a dress is masculine (vestido) and a tie is feminine (corbata)!
Some will argue that bebé is both masculine and feminine, meaning that the article can be switched according to gender. You'll find evidence that supports this idea on the Internet. But, it isn't so in most places.
All the dictionaries I looked at say the word is masculine.
You usually use bebé when talking about a newborn or a suckling child. If you want to know what sex the baby is, you ask '¿Es niño o niña?' After you know what it is, then you can start using él or ella instead. This isn't any different than in English when we say, "What a beautiful baby!" "Is it a boy or a girl?"
|