Christoph D. answered 05/30/16
Grammar Tutor with more than 12,000+ Hours of Teaching Experience
Hi Shane,
I always caution students to avoid categorizing -आ (ā) ending nouns as masculine and ई (ī) ending nouns as feminine as there are simply too many exceptions.
For beginners, I suggest that you simply learn the gender of nouns as you learn the meaning. I think doing something like this for each noun is useful:
एक बड़ा मकान (ek baṛā makān) - one big house
दो बड़े मकान (do baṛe makān) - two big houses
एक बड़ी मेज़ (ek baṛī mez) - one big table
दो बड़ी मेज़ें (do baṛī mezẽ) - two big tables
So you practice putting the nouns into the plural along with a changeable adjective (like बड़ा baṛā), which can be done orally or through writing.
When you get to a higher level, you will start to see patterns in terms of noun gender (e.g. all Sanskrit-derived nouns that end in -ता tā are feminine). But at the basic level, just make learning the gender part of your learning routine whenever you encounter a new noun.