Plural and Singular
Do you remember back in Saludos, we learned how to say man, woman, young woman, child? Check yourself here to see if you do remember:
These words are called nouns. Do you know what a noun is in English? A noun is a person, place, thing or idea. In Spanish, all nouns have a gender--either masculine or feminine. It is easy to know the gender of the nouns you know at this point--those that refer to people. If they are referring to a male, they are masculine, and if they refer to a female, they are feminine. Knowing the genders of places and things can be hard to guess sometimes and will require memorization.
In the above list of nouns, you can also see that each noun is preceded by a little word. That little word is called an article and the ones used above are called definite articles. They refer to the man, the woman, the child, etc. There are four forms of the definite article in Spanish, depending on the gender and number of the noun.
la casa |
 |
las casas |
el libro |
|
los libros |
la mesa |
|
las mesas |
What is the rule for forming plurals in Spanish? If the word ends in a vowel, we simply add -s. If the word ends in a consonant, we add -es.
Now, here's another set of words:
el señor |
|
los señores |
el español |
|
los españoles |
el doctor |
|
los doctores |
The plural of "la" is "las".
The plural of "el" is "los".
If the noun is plural in Spanish, all words that describe it must also be plural.
In the following list of words, see if you can make the nouns and their articles plural in Spanish.
Click on each word to see if you have done it correctly.
El televisor
La computadora
El teléfono
La radio
La clase
El profesor
La profesora
El estudiante
La estudiante
El sábado
El domingo
