[qball]

>I'm starting to see them as just a way to remember which word you were talking about

I find it even simpler than that: they're just [different versions of articles] designed to help the language flow better.

English has the same sort of thing going on with its indefinite articles a/an- sure, that's not gender per se, but it functions the same way in terms of "fill the empty space when there's a vowel sound coming up". Picking the incorrect gender for a noun in Romance languages is not quite as grating but ultimately after a while you... just know because the other way sounds weird.

[whoooooo123]

There's a chain of Mexican restaurants in the UK called "El Mexicana" which, as anyone who's studied Spanish for more than 10 seconds knows, is wrong: it should be "El Mexicano" or "La Mexicana". ("Lo Mexicano" would work too, come to think of it.)

The mistake is so obvious that it can only be deliberate. I guess it's supposed to be endearing or cute? To my mind it's just grating and annoying and makes me not want to eat there.

(An alternative hypothesis is that the grammatically invalid name is a marketing gimmick designed to get people talking about the company. Looks like it's working.)

https://www.elmexicana.co.uk/

[veltas]

They make really good fast Mexican food, way better than any other Mexican chain I've known of in the UK.

El Mexicana is (I think) a brand they use for Extra service stations. They tried to branch into restaurants under the name "Cocina" and had I think 4-5 locations pre-COVID and now have just one, I am guessing down to the lockdowns and associated investor panic rather than the quality of the restaurants.