Definite Article – el, la, los, las
The Spanish definite article has to agree in gender and number with the noun it modifies, and it doesn’t always correspond to an article in other languages.
The Spanish definite article has to agree in gender and number with the noun it modifies, and it doesn’t always correspond to an article in other languages.
A1 - Beginning Spanish • agreement • gender • lesson plans • plurals
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
Test yourself on the gender of Spanish nouns with this fill-in-the-blanks exercise:
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The aptly named indefinite article (un, una, unos, unas) indicates an unspecific or unidentified countable noun.
A1 - Beginning Spanish • agreement • gender • indefinition • lesson plans • plurals
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.