Apocopes

Spanish apocopes

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.

   

Augmentatives

Spanish augmentativesIn 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.

   

Diminutives

Spanish diminutivesIn 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.

   

   

Masculine Nouns

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.

   

Nouns

Spanish nounsOne 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.

   

Regular Feminine and Plural Nouns

Feminine and plural Spanish nounsLike 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.

   

Stressed A

Spanish stressed aThere’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.