Nouns and Articles

1. Noun = person, place, thing

2. Gender

• All nouns are either masculine or feminine.
• Very often masculine nouns end in O and feminine nouns end in A.
• Some nouns can be either gender and keep the same meaning.
• Some nouns can be either gender and change meaning.
• Nouns that represent people can be either gender. Sometimes they change to reflect the gender.

3. Pluralize a noun

• ends in vowel -> add S
• ends in consonant -> add ES
• ends in Z -> change Z to C and add ES
• some nouns have no plural form

• Equivalent to “the”
• Change la to el when first syllable is A or HA and is stressed.
  • e.g. el agua, el hacha, el águila
• Contractions
  • A + EL = AL
  • DE + El = DEL

• Equivalent to a, an, some
• Can be dropped with unmodified noun after ser
  • e.g. Soy estudiante.