Los artículos en español – Articles

Los Artículos Articles

In Spanish, nouns -sustantivos- are either masculine (m.) or feminine (f.).
Each gender has its own article.
el tema m. the theme
la manzana f. the apple
los hombres m. plural the men
las mujeres f. plural the women

Nouns that end in a are almost always feminine and nouns that end in o are almost always masculine.
un libro m.

a book
una casa f.

a house
unos chocolates m. plural some chocolates
unas gatas f.plural some female cats

To form the plural of a noun, add an s to the end if it ends in a vowel.

el problema los problemas
the problem the problems

the day the days
el amigo los amigos

the friend the friends

Add an es to the end if it ends in a consonant.
el conductor los conductores

the driver the drivers

The accent is dropped for the plural form if the noun ends in -ion.
la canción las canciones

the song the songs

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The Spanish Alphabet – El abecedario o alfabeto

You can easily learn it in Spanish if you know the alphabet in English.
That is because the Spanish alphabet is very similar to the alphabets of most other western European languages, including English. According to the Real Academia Española, which is considered the arbiter of what’s official Spanish, the following letters make up the Spanish alphabet:

a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ll, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z

This chart shows the capital letters along with name of each letter.

A: a
B: be
C: ce
CH: che
D: de
E: e
F: efe
G: ge
H: hache
I: i
J: jota
K: ka
L: ele
LL: elle
M: eme
N: ene
Ñ: eñe
O: o
P: pe
Q: cu
R: ere
S: ese
T: te
U: u
V: ve
W: doble ve
X: equis
Y: y griega
Z: zeta

Which letters make up the alphabet?
W (sometimes referred to as doble ve) and K, which exist almost exclusively in words of foreign origin, such as kilómetro, kiosko. And some lists count RR (erre), which isn’t pronounced the same as R.

It used to be that dictionaries would ch after c. But in modern dictionaries, the words are alphabetized as they would be in English (except that the Ñ comes after the N).

The letters B and V have exactly the same pronunciation, and their names are pronounced exactly alike. Sometimes B is referred to as be larga (“long B”) and the V as uve or ve corta (“short V”).

You will find as you learn Spanish that vowels are often written with accents, as in corazón, César, and the U is sometimes topped with a dieresis or umlaut, as in antigüedad, agüita.

However, vowels with such diacritical marks are not considered separate letters (as they can be in some other languages).

Please, note that the letters of the alphabet are feminine: la a, “the ‘a'”; la b, “the ‘b.'”