Many Spanish nouns and adjectives have shortened forms called apocopes, which are created by dropping one or more syllables at the end of the word. They’re often informal and some are regional, so be careful using them as they might be inappropriate and/or unknown in certain places.
In Spanish, suffixes called augmentatives can be added to nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and names to indicate bigness, as well as other ideas such as excessiveness, contempt, or disdain. In this way, you can say that something is big without adding an adjective like grande to indicate bigness or repugnante to indicate contempt.
B1 - Intermediate Spanish • suffixes
In Spanish, suffixes called diminutives can be added to nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and names to indicate smallness, as well as other ideas such as affection, humor, pity, irony, or ridicule. In this way, you can say that something is little without adding an adjective like pequeño to indicate smallness or querido to indicate affection.
A2 - Low-Intermediate Spanish • plurals • suffixes
In general, Spanish nouns that end in -o are masculine, and those that end in -a are feminine. Here are the exceptions to this rule.
A2 - Low-Intermediate Spanish • gender
While the gender of many Spanish nouns can be determined by the final letter, that’s not always the case. Fortunately, there are several categories of words that are always masculine.
One of the eight parts of speech, a noun is commonly defined as "a person, place, or thing." If that seems vague, that’s because it is.
A1 - Beginning Spanish • agreement • gender • lesson plans
Like English nouns, most Spanish nouns have singular and plural forms. In addition, Spanish nouns referring to people and animals often have different masculine and feminine forms, which means that these nouns can have up to four forms.
A1 - Beginning Spanish • gender • plurals
There’s an interesting phenomenon in Spanish to do with feminine nouns that begin with a stressed A sound. When these nouns are singular and preceded directly by a definite article, the masculine article is used instead of the feminine article you might expect.