Spanish: An Essential Grammar

(due to an unmentioned feminine noun such as letra ‘letter’, isla‘island’, compañía‘company’, carretera‘road’): las haches the h ...

A few feminine nouns signifying groups of persons may also refer to indi- vidual male or female members of that group: Feminine ...

Collective nouns and agreement Collective nouns are singular but refer to a group of people or things, e.g. multitud‘crowd’, may ...

Articles in Spanish may be categorized as definite, indefinite and neuter. Definite articles are used before nouns to designate ...

When the article is an integral part of a title this contraction is not made, in writing at least: Es reportera de El Universo. ...

El used to form verbal nouns Elis the required article before the infinitive of a verb used as a noun, see 17.6. The definite ar ...

But after verbs such as tener‘to have’ and faltar‘to lack’, the article is not used: ¡Hay que tener paciencia para hacer esto! Y ...

Hoy es viernes. Today is Friday. Trabajo de lunes a viernes. I work from Monday to Friday. The definite article is also used wit ...

Definite article with numbers and numerical expressions The definite article is used with numbered nouns and with certain expres ...

Informally, the definite article may be used with common nouns referring to relatives (but never in direct address): La abuela e ...

Note: If the qualifier forms part of a country’s name the article is not used: Irlanda del Norte‘Northern Ireland’. In addition, ...

Omission of the definite article with nouns in apposition In formal Spanish, the definite article is often omitted before a seco ...

Note: The article would generally not be used after de‘of’ when the reference is not to the language as a whole: un curso de ing ...

The plural forms must also be used with nouns which only exist in plural form (see 2.1.8), sometimes meaning ‘a’ or ‘a pair’: un ...

onlyin cases in which the noun does not refer to particular persons or things (especially in sentences that describe habitual ac ...

Omission of the indefinite article with nouns in apposition Like the definite article (see 3.2.2.3), the indefinite article is o ...

Omission of the indefinite article with common verb + noun combinations The indefinite article is often omitted after verbs such ...

Lo with adjectives and past participles Lomay be used before a masculine singular adjective or past participle, to state succinc ...

Lo + de + noun This succinctly approximates to English ‘the matter of’, ‘the business about’: Lo del agua es un problema grave. ...

Demonstratives are the equivalent of English ‘this’/‘these’ and ‘that’/‘those’. Spanish likewise uses the first of these two cat ...