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What is a noun? What do you already know about nouns in Spanish? How are they treated differently from nouns in English?
Ever since you started your study of Spanish, you noted that there was an "el, la, los or las" before nouns, ¿verdad? Everything in Spanish is either masculine or femenine. How can this be for inanimate objects? I don't know either.
This unit will be a review
of what you already know, and it will also go into great detail about some
things you do not yet know, but really need to master if you have a desire
to communicate at the higher levels. The following is a brief list
of what will be covered in this section.
As we already know, all nouns in Spanish are either masculine or feminine. Why?... I have no idea. The idea is foreign to me, because I grew up with English as my native language, as did you most likely. But, this is important to know, because you must use the correct forms of articles and adjectives when describing these nouns, so if you make a mistake in the gender of a noun, you will also most likely err when using the article and adjective. Hopefully you have been learning words with their articles. For example, is it "el" or "la" libro? "el" or "la" mesa? And what if you wanted to buy some paper in a store. Would you ask "¿Dónde está el papel?" or "¿Dónde está la papel?" ? Of course you learned "el papel", so this comes out naturally. Now, what about "mano"? Do you say "Levanta el mano." or "Levanta la mano."? (The answer is "la"; I hope you got it correct.)
But, what happens when you come across a word you don't know? Well, if you take any advanced exams- AP, SAT II, College Entrance, etc. - you will see words you do not know. If you continue your study, or travel extensively you will also come across words you do not know. So let's look at the rules that are used to determine the gender of a noun. First we'll look at nouns in general that do not refer to people- they are a little different and will be examined later.
The gender of many words can be determined by looking at the ending. the following is a summary- with notable exceptions- of the rules that you can follow.
O
There are a number
of other words ending in "a" that are also masculine, but there is a pattern.
See if you can figure it out.
Looking at this list,
can you hypothesize a rule to determine why they are in their own category?
Just to help you along, here are some words that do not fit into the above
list:
Here's the answer.
The "irregular words" are from Greek. In Greek these words had masculine
gender, and maintained this when they transferred to Spanish, even though
they have a "Spanish femenine" ending. How are they different
from other words ending in "a"? Three things:
-dad, -tad, -tud, -umbre
With no exceptions, words ending in "dad", "tad", "tud" or "umbre" are feminine.
With only two notable
exceptions, words ending in "ión" are feminine.
The
exceptions:
What do these words
have in common? They are both motorized forms of transportation.
(At least it gives you something to remember them by!)
-ie, -cia, -ez, -eza, -nza, -sis, -itis
Words with these endings
are generally feminine. Here are some examples, and I have no exceptions
to show you, so follow the rule!
Words with these endings
are generally masculine.
Sometimes you can determine the gender of a noun by what it is, too.
For example:
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Make up your own compound word- a verb in the third person singular (does something) + a noun in the plural (to these things). Make a video infomercial and a full page magazine ad for this new product you've created. Remember that the product is masculine!!!! You might want to do this in a small group. |
And you thought this was going to be easy?
Some words can be either masculine or femenine, but the meaning of the word changes with the gender change.
Some
examples of such words.
In a test
situation, determine the meaning of the word before assigning its gender.
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One more thing- ARTE.
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Write
whether the word is masculine (m) or feminine (f).
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(que se escucha) |
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Obviously, people have gender so this will make more sense than saying if a chair is masculine or femenine.
If the word ends in ...... in the masculine form..., in the feminine it ends in...
o
exceptions (These do not change the "o", but do change the article.): el testigo > la testigo; el modelo > la modelo
or
If a word ends in "or" on the masculine, add and "a" to form the feminine. el profesor > la profesora; el escultor > la escultora.
és, án
Words
ending in "és" and "á[í,ó]n" drop the accent
and add an "a" to form the feminine.
el
francés > la francesa; el capitán > la capitana; el ladrón
> la ladrona, el bailarín > la bailarina, etc.
a
Some words end in "a" in the masculine form. Again, these are often from Greek and the gender change is going to be noted merely by a change in article. el artista > la artista; el pianista > la pianista; el detista > la dentista, el atleta > la atleta, etc.
e
Words ending in "e" fall into two categories- "e" and "nte". Words ending in "e" first. They change the article only: el intérprete > la intérprete; el tigre > la tigre, etc.
nte
Many words ending in "nte" do one of two things. In the past, they kept the "e" at the end- el cliente > la cliente; el dependiente > la dependiente, etc. However, it is becoming common to change the "e" to "a", so you may hear (read, say or write) la clienta, la dependienta, etc. At this point, I do not believe one is more correct than another.
consonants
(other
than "or", "és" and án")
These words stay the same, but change the article to reflect the gender change: el joven > la joven, el líder > la líder, etc.
Words that Change with a Gender Change
You
already know some of these: It's not la
padre, is it? Of course not. It's
la madre.
There are other words that change as do these. (You have already
seen some of these)
Words that don't change at all.
There
is a short list of words that do not change gender- article or word.
They just do not change! So regardless of whether they are
designating a male or female, they will always be:
Write
the femenine form for each of the following nouns:
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Do
some online activities at studyspanish.com. Review the matierial,
do the activities and take the tests.
You didn't know there was this much to nouns, did you?
This is pretty easy, and it's logical, too. But there's more to know than you think you already know, so hang on and pay attention.
First
the easy stuff:
Words ending in "s" have special rules.
As
you know, all Spanish words have set accents- written or unwritten.
Did you know that there is actually a rule for this? And since Spanish
is phonetic- everything is pronounced the way it is spelled- if you know
the phonemes and the accent rule, you can never make a mistake pronouncing
a word in Spanish. Now that is pretty cool! For pronunciation
practice or review, check
here. The "natural" accent rule follows.
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So if a word is stressed in a place other than its naturally stressed syllable, it must be written. That way the word will be pronounced correctly when read aloud (lápiz, árbol, francés, limón, etc.). It's different, but logical. The accents are important, too. Look at how these words are different: hable (command- "speak!", or subjunctive) and hablé (I spoke). Changing an accent can be like changing a letter, so be careful. (Also, some words have written accents to distinguish themselves from others without changing pronunciation: mi/mí, tu/tú, se/sé, de/dé, mas/ más, etc.)
And
how does this tie in with the pluralization of nouns?
Well sometimes you will have to delete a written accent (as you saw with
japonés > japoneses), and other times you will have to add one.
Fortunately, these all deal with words that end in "n".
Escribe
la forma del plural para cada palabra siguiente:
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Now do an Online activity to practice pluralization. Review the information, do the activities and take the test.
Now
you know all you need to know about nouns. It's time to move into
the topic of ARTICLES. The articles are the little words used before
a noun, and there are two types. One type is "definite" and the other
is "indefinite". We have these in English, too. In English
the definite article is "THE" and the indefinites are "A" or "AN".
How are they different? Look at these two sentences:
Make
sense?
There
are four forms for each type of article- based on gender and number.
When
a singular feminine noun
begins with a stressed
"A"
or "HA",
the article used before it will be masculine ("EL" or "UN"). Note:
The gender of the word will not change, just the article.
This is important to remember because any adjectives that modify it will
remain feminine. Let's look at some examples, then we'll see why
this happens. (There is a logical explanation!)
But
NOT:
Para practicar:
Go back to the first activity you did and this time write the definite article (el, la, los, las) for each word. When you are done, check your answers.
Now for the uses
In general, these words are used pretty much the same way in Spanish as they are in English. However, the DEFINITE articles are used in MORE situations (in Spanish than in English), and the INDEFINITE articles is OMITTED in Spanish in certain situations when it is used in English.
We'll start with the uses of the definite article.
In
Spanish the definite article is used as it is in English (for the word
"the"), and also in these situations:
Sometimes
the definite article is omitted in Spanish when it is used in English.
Last part!!!!
The uses of the indefinite articles
The
indefinite articles is omitted in Spanish frequently when it is used in
English. Here are the rules:
¡Hay que practicar!
Complete
the sentences with the correct indefinite article, if one is necessary.
If you don't need one, write an "X".
Now
it's time for more practice. Go to these links at Study Spanish.com
and practice what we've studied. Do the activities and take the tests
for each unit.
Respuestas
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(but remember- there is no true femenine form of this!) |
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Definite article translations