Lesson 28: Adjectives, nouns, genders and English words ending 'ive'
Here we'll expand on the previous lesson to show the affect the gender of a word can have on words that describe it and on the word itself.
We've seen over and over again this connection between 'a' and feminine.
 Spanish |  English |
|---|---|
| La casa | The house |
| Las casas | The houses |
| Las casas grandes | The big houses |
Its not so obvious but 'o' has a connection with masculine.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Los autos grandes | The big cars |
| Los carros grandes | The big cars |
We are going to see more of this as we move forward.
Remember these are not absolute rules. We already saw that words ending 'a' are generally feminine but words ending 'ma' are masculine. However these are good general rules that you can use if you are stuck and do not know a gender of a word.
Adjectives and Genders
Adjectives - words that describe things (e.g. "red") are also affected by the gender of the word they explain when the adjective ends in 'o'
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Caro | Expensive |
| El carro es caro | The car is expensive |
| Es caro | It's expensive (masculine word like 'auto') |
| Es cara | It's expensive (femine word like 'casa') |
When the adjective doesn't end in 'o' we don't change it:
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| La situación global | The global situation |
| La maquina grande | Le maquina grande |
But we always pluralise if we are talking about more than one thing.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Los carros son caros | The cars are expensive |
| Las maquinas son caras | The cars (machines) are expensive |
Nouns and Genders
A noun - a word we can describe and a word we can put 'the' or 'a' in front of like "professor" - can also have its ending changed depending on gender
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Es profesor | He is a professor |
| Es profesora | She is a professor |
| Son profesoras | They (group of females) are professors |
| Doctor | Doctor (male person) |
| Doctora | Doctor (female person) |
Now much as I hate grammar (and in fact it was not taught at my school so I've always been on the backfoot with it) understanding nouns and adjectives is vital for knowing what to do with words in Spanish.
If it is an adjective and it ends in 'o' then this gets changed depending on the gender. If it is a noun the ending changes far more often.
The plural of nouns
We've already seen that if a word ends in a vowel and we want to make it plural we just add an 's' but if it doesn't we ad 'es'.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Profesores | Professors (male group or mixed group) |
| Profesoras | Professors (female group) |
| Son profesores | They are professors (male group or mixed group) |
| Son profesoras | They are professors (female group) |
| Son doctores | They are doctors (male group or mixed group) |
| Son doctoras | They are doctors (female group) |
English words ending 'ive'
Here's another bucket of words you already know in Spanish, you just didn't know how to tweak them - words ending 'ive' in English
- for masculine singular words 'ive' changes to 'ivo'
- for feminine singular words 'ive' changes to 'iva'
All the time we are seeing this connection with 'o' and masculine and 'a' and feminine.
Masculine is the 'default' - in other words if something doesn't have an obvious gender (like a situation) we use masculine.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Es adictivo | It's addictive |
| Es positivo | He is positive |
| Es positiva | She is positive |
| Son positivos | They are positive |
| Son intuitivos | They are Intuitive |
| Son intuitivas | They are Intuitive (group of women) |
| Es muy atractiva | She is very attractive |
In many of the cases above the adjective tells us who we are talking about. We say 'Es muy atractiva' and because 'atractiva' ends in an 'a' we know we are talking about a femine person or thing.
However where we might be having a conversation about both a femine person and a femine thing (or rather a femine word for a thing) we might need to clarify what we say. Or we might want to emphasize what we are saying. Then we can always add 'ella' for "she".
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Ella es muy atractiva | She is very attractive |
| Ella es muy creativa | She is very creative |
| Ellos son agresivos | They (male or mixed group) are aggresive |
| Él es negativo | He is negative |
| Es muy negativo | He is very negative |
| Es intensivo | Its intensivo |
| Son nativos | They are natives |
| Son nativas | They (female group) are natives |