Spanish Grammar: Nouns – Basics

Spanish Grammar: Nouns - Basics

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Identify

Spanish Grammar: Nouns – Basics
la gramática española: los sustantivos – los básicos

  • One of three major categories of words.
  • Identify people, places, or things in a sentence.

60-Second Spanish Grammar Lesson

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In Spanish there is a large class of words to which the label noun can be applied. A Spanish noun can be identified by the fact that it can have endings added to it to change its reference from one to more than one (singular or plural) and by the fact that it belongs to one of two subclasses (genders), called masculine and feminine. While a noun can change for number, it has only one gender or the other (masculine or feminine), which is inherent and does not change. The terms masculine and feminine are convenient but more or less arbitrary tags to represent grammatical categories and have nothing to do with gender or sex in the real world.

For example, La silla does not indicate in ANY way that chairs are for women.

You will noticed that the word “el” or the word “la” precedes each noun. These are the singular forms of the definite article: “el” is masculine, and “la” is feminine. When memorizing each noun it is well to memorize its gender at the same time. Usually this can be done by memorizing the appropriate form of the definite article with the noun. The words “el” and “la”, called definite articles, are usually equivalent of the English “the”. The words “un” and “una”, called indefinite articles, are usually the equivalent of English “a” or “an”.

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  • Nouns – Basics
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