Modern Spanish Grammar: A Practical Guide

Many ‘modern’ colour terms (e.g. rosa‘pink’, malva‘mauve’) and colour adjectives modified by claro‘bright’ and oscuro‘dark’ (e. ...

El niño no había comido en cuarenta y ocho horas. La madre parecía no hacer caso de ello/él. The child had not eaten for forty e ...

3 Plurals and number agreement 3.1 Plural forms 3.1.1 Spanish nouns and adjectives form their plurals as follows: Class 1. Singu ...

Some Latin loanwords do not change in the plural: el déficit‘deficit’ los déficit‘deficits’ 3.1.2 In all the above cases, the st ...

these nouns are singular, they take a singular verb; but because they denote a plural idea, there is a strong tendency to use a ...

4 The articles 4.1 Definite article The definite article forms of Spanish (corresponding to English ‘the’) are: The article agre ...

4.2 Principal differences between the use of the definite article in Spanish and English The Spanish definite article is used: ( ...

en España in Spain en (el) Perú in Peru but: en la España de la posguerra in postwar Spain The article is retained in names of c ...

El que no hubiera contestación me sorprendió. The fact that there was no reply surprised me. 4.3.2 El de, la de, los de and las ...

Elena es profesora. Elena is a teacher. Es general de ejército. He is an army general. but Es un socialista tradicional. He’s a ...

5 Adjectives Adjectives agree in number and gender with the noun to which they relate (for examples see 2.6, 3.1.1, 3.2.1). 5.1 ...

(c)Santo is shortened to san before male names unless such names begin with To- or Do-: San Andrés‘Saint Andrew’ Santo Tomás‘Sai ...

¡Valiente amigo eres tú! You’re a fine friend! (ironical) 5.2.3 Some contrasting examples: los blancos cisnes ‘white swans’ (imp ...

 36.1 (p. 212) 5.3 Adjectives used as nouns In Spanish, adjectives are frequently used as nouns: Saludé al viejo. I greeted th ...

6 Comparative forms of adjectives and adverbs
^37 (p. 219) 6.1 Lack of distinction between ‘more .’ and ‘most .’ Spanish does ...

Adjective Comparative bien mejor (más bien means ‘rather’) bueno mejor (más bueno is sometimes used in the sense of ‘better in c ...

7 Numbers 7.1 Cardinal numbers cero 0 un(o)/-a 1 dos 2 tres 3 cuatro 4 cinco 5 seis 6 siete 7 ocho 8 nueve 9 diez 10 once 11 doc ...

noventa 90 cien, ciento 100 ciento un(o)/-a 101 ciento treinta y cinco 135 doscientos/-as 200 trescientos/-as 300 cuatrocientos/ ...

octavo/-a 8th noveno/-a 9th décimo/-a 10th Although there are ordinal numbers above ten, they are only used in very formal Spani ...

7.3.3 Kings and queens Juan Carlos Primero (I)‘Juan Carlos the First’ Alfonso Décimo/Diez (X)‘Alfonso the Tenth’ Luis Catorce (X ...