Spanish nouns
| Spanish language |
|---|
| Image:Eñe on keyboard - blue.jpg |
|
Names for the language |
The Spanish language has nouns that express concrete objects, groups and classes of objects, qualities, feelings and other abstractions. All nouns have a conventional grammatical gender. Countable nouns inflect for number (singular and plural). Note that the division between uncountable and countable nouns is not as clear-cut as in English.
Contents |
Gender
All Spanish nouns have one of two grammatical genders: masculine or feminine (mostly conventional, that is, arbitrarily assigned). Most adjectives and pronouns, and all articles and participles, indicate the gender of the noun they reference or modify.
In a sentence like "Large tables are nicer", the Spanish equivalent, Las mesas grandes son más bonitas, must use words according to the gender of the noun. The noun, mesa ("table"), is feminine in Spanish. Therefore, the article (i. e. the word for "the") must be feminine too, and so la instead of el, is required. However, mesas is plural here, so we need las rather than la. The two adjectives, whether next to the noun or after the verb, have to "agree" with the noun as well. Grande is a word which is invariable for gender, so it just takes a plural marker: grandes. Bonito is a word that can agree for both gender and number, so we say bonitas to go with mesas. A student of Spanish must keep in mind all these features when making sentences.
Types of noun (masculine, vacillant, etc)
Nouns can be grouped in the following categories:
- In general
- Feminine are most nouns that end in -a, -ción/-sión and -ad, though there are some exceptions.
- Masculine are the rest of the nouns, usually ending in -o or a consonant.
- Applied to persons and most domesticated animals:
- Declinable nouns. The feminine form adds a or replaces the final vowel by a. Examples: el profesor/la profesora, el presidente/la presidenta, el perro/la perra.
- Invariant nouns (in Spanish, sustantivos de género común). The feminine form and the masculine form are identical: el artista/la artista, el testigo/la testigo, el estudiante/la estudiante.
- Nouns with a unique grammatical gender. The noun has a fixed gender, regardless of the sex of the person it describes: el personaje, la visita. A recent politically correct usage substitutes the plural inclusive masculine (amigos, "friends, male or of any gender") with the character @ (amig@s) in writing, or with the longer form (amigos y amigas, or amigas y amigos). @ appears as a blend of o and a. This usage is unpronounceable, and mostly restricted to informal internet-speak. In leftist graffiti and posters, @ can be substituted by the anarchist symbol (Image:Anarchy symbol neat.png), that also seems to blend O and A.
- Applied to wild and some domesticated animals:
- Nouns where the two sexes of animals have different words to describe them: el toro/la vaca, el caballo/la yegua.
- Epicene nouns. The gender of the noun is fixed and sex is indicated by macho (male) or hembra (female). Examples: la jirafa macho, la jirafa hembra, el rinoceronte macho, el rinoceronte hembra.
- Applied to things:
- Masculine or inclusive: el pan.
- Feminine or exclusive: la leche.
- Vacillant (called sustantivos ambiguos in Spanish). Either gender is acceptable: Internet is an example of this. Speakers hesitate between making it masculine like other loanwords from English, or making it feminine to agree with red, "net". Linde ("boundary") and testuz ("animal's forehead") can be either gender. Azúcar is probably the quirkiest example of such nouns. It can be masculine with el, feminine with el (bizarrely) or feminine with la. The determiner seems to go in the masculine in standard use: el, este, ese, tanto. Any adjectives agreeing with it are usually masculine in Spain and feminine in Latin America: el azúcar moreno o blanco / el azúcar negra o rubia. Mar is a special case. It is normally masculine, but in poetry and sailors' speech it is feminine. Arte is masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural, though it can be feminine in the singular when it means "art-form" and masculine in the plural in the expression los artes de pesca, "fishing gear".
- In some cases the same word can take two genders with a different meaning for each. In that case it is better to say that there are two discrete words. El capital = "funds"; la capital = "capital city".
(Note: Some nouns ending in -e that refer to persons are declinable, e.g., presidente/a, whereas others are invariant, e. g., estudiante. More often than not, nouns that refer to positions that are traditionally held by men are declinable.)
Determining gender from endings
Nouns ending in -o are masculine, with the only notable exception of the word mano ("hand"); -a is typically feminine, with notable exceptions; other vowels and consonants are more often than not masculine, but many are feminine, particularly those referring to women (la madre) or ending in -ción, -dad, -ez (la nación, la soledad, la vejez).
A small set of words of Greek origin and ending in -ma are masculine: problema "problem", lema "lemma, motto", tema "theme, topic", sistema "system", telegrama "telegram", etc.
Words ending in -ista referring to a person can generally be either gender: el artista, la artista, "the artist, the female artist". The same is true of words ending in -ante or -ente, though sometimes seperate female forms ending in -a are used.
Words taken from foreign languages may:
- Take the gender they have in that language, with neuter taken to be the same as masculine (so English nouns are made masculine)
- Take the gender it seems to be (e.g. la Coca-Cola because it ends in -a)
- Take the gender of the closest-related Spanish word (e.g. la Guinness because of la cerveza)
Gender of proper nouns (names)
Names of people
People's names agree with the sex of the person, even if they appear to be the opposite:
- Chema es guapo
- Amparo es guapa
Names of settlements
Usage for places varies. You can choose between making them:
- Feminine if they end in -a, otherwise masculine:
- la Barcelona de Gaudí
- el Londres de Dickens
- Agree with the underlying noun el pueblo or la ciudad
- Nueva York (city)
- la antigua Cartago (city)
- Fraga es pequeño (village/small town)
- Always masculine: (this usage may seem wrong to some speakers)
- Barcelona no es pequeño
- Londres no es pequeño
With examples like New York, the Nueva is a fixed part of the name and so cannot be made masculine, but New Mexico is translated as Nuevo México and considered masculine, since México is a masculine noun.
Rivers
Rivers are masculine because of the underlying masculine noun río. The ancient Roman belief that rivers (amnes) were male gods may also influence this. Locally, a few rivers may be feminine, but the masculine is always safe and correct.
- el [río de la] Plata = "The River Plate" (literally "the River of Silver")
- el [río] Támesis = "The River Thames"
- el [río] Tajo = "The River Tagus"
- el [río] Colorado = "The Colorado River" (literally "the Red River")
- el [río] Cinca / la Cinca = "The River Cinca" (in the Aragonese Pyrenees)
Vestiges of a Neutral Gender
While Spanish is generally regarded to have two genders, its ancestor, Latin, had three. The transition from three genders to two is mostly complete, however, vestiges of a neuter gender can still be seen.
Most notably, this is seen in pronouns like esto, eso, aquello, and ello, which are the neuter forms of este, ese, aquel, and él, respectively. These words correspond with English "this", "that", "him" or "it". Additionally the word lo, while usually masculine, can be considered neuter in some circumstances. It can also be used in the place of el to be a neutral form of the article "the", as in lo mismo, "the same".
These forms were preserved because unlike most nouns in Latin, the difference between masculine and neuter for these pronouns did not depend on a final consonant. For example, most Latin neuter singulars in the nominative case ended in -um, the non-neuter counterpart often ending in -us. When the final consonants in these endings are dropped, the result is -u for both; this became -o in Spanish. However, a word like Latin iste had the neuter istud; the former became este and the latter became esto.
Another sign that Spanish once had a grammatical neuter exists in words that derive from neuter plurals. In Latin, a neuter plural ended in -a, and so these words today in Spanish get interpreted as singular feminine, and take singular verb forms; however, they do express some notion of a plural. For example, la física corresponds to English "physics", a plural. In some cases, even, grammatical trends that expect a plural will accept the singular form of these words. For example, there exists a common word formation pattern of putting a verb followed by a plural noun and making it into a singular noun, for example sacar + puntas becomes el sacapuntas. For the feminine word ropa this pattern does not take ropas as one might expect: guardar and ropa become guardarropa, because ropa ("clothes") is already plural.
Number
There are two grammatical numbers: singular and plural. The singular form is the one found in dictionaries (base form). The plural is indicated in most words by adding -s (if the base form ends in a vowel) or -es otherwise. Note that final y in words like rey, though phonetically a vowel, counts as a consonant (rey → reyes).
The masculine gender is used for plural forms of mixed sexes (it is inclusive): los niños, grammatically masculine, may mean "the children" or "the boys". The feminine gender is exclusive in the plural: las niñas = "the little girls". When male sex needs to be shown exclusively in the plural, phrases such as los niños varones are used. Feminists (and their satirists) try to reverse the pattern with phrases such as las personas humanas jóvenes varones = "the young male human people".
Some words are formally always grammatically plural: pantalones "trousers", tijeras "scissors". In many dialects, however, these words are taken to be semantic plurals, and their singular forms are used instead: pantalón, tijera.
In expressions with an indefinite determiner, singular forms are used (unlike English, where "some" and "any" tend to modify plural nouns).
- Si hay algún árbol, lo derribaremos = "If there are any trees, we will fell them"
- Por cualquier medio = "By any means"
Forms of ninguno ("no") always take singular noun phrases, even where plurality might be intended:
- Ningún obstáculo se interpone = "No obstacle is in our way", "There are no obstacles in our way"
- No vi a ninguna mujer = "I saw no women", "I didn't see any women"
The determiner cualquiera has a plural form (cualesquiera), but it is never used outside formal or technical contexts.
Diminutives, Augmentatives and suffixes
Spanish nouns can be made by adding a very productive set of suffixes to existing nouns and adjectives. This usually just slightly modifies the meaning, but sometimes it creates something new entirely.
The most common subset of such suffixes are the diminutives, which convey the idea of smallness, delicateness, etc. (also for endearing terms). The most common diminutive in Spanish is -it-. It is added to the root of the noun, and in actual usage it takes the proper agreement for gender and number.
- planta → plantita / plantota ("plant" → "little plant" / "big plant")
- vaso → vasito / vasote ("glass" → "little glass" / "big glass")
- niño → niñito / niñote ("small boy" → "little tiny boy" / "Big (little tiny) boy")
When the word does not end in a vowel, -it- becomes -cit- for diminutives if the word ends in -n. Agreement marks are added to it according to the gender and number:
- botón → botoncito / botonote
- Carmen → Carmencita
When the base word ends in z, an epenthetic e is inserted (notice the orthographic change): pez → pececito / pecezote. There is no fixed when the base ends in other consonants: azúcar → azuquítar or azuquita / azucota.
Local flavour
The choice of diminutive is often a mark of regional dialects and influence of coexistent Romance languages. Educated speakers who would use -ito or no diminutive at all in more formal speech may use local forms when they want a friendlier or more colourful way of expressing themselves, sometimes borrowing another region's diminutive.
So, instead of the standard -ito, you could find:
- -illo in Andalusia (’quillo for chico is a typical Cadiz interjection)
- -ico in Aragon
- -ín or -ino in Asturias, as in Asturian
- -iño in Galicia, as in Galician
- -uco in Cantabria
- -ete from Catalan
- -uelo this is an old fashioned Spanish suffix
In fossilised forms, these can be found in standard words, such as puerta → portillo, burro → borrico, Venecia → Venezuela, paño → pañuelo, calle → calleja → callejuela etc.
Sometimes different suffixes are used for variety when more than one is used at once:
- chico → chiquito → chiquitillo etc.
There is a well-known tango called De chiquilin te miraba de afuera...
Other suffixes
As well as being an Andalusian (especially Seville) alternative to -ito, the suffix -illo is also a special diminutive with a nuance of "a funny sort of...". It is also used to create new nouns:
- palo "stick" → palillo "toothpick"
- bolso "handbag" → bolsillo "pocket"
- guerra "war" → guerrilla "hit-and-run warfare"
An example of the same phenomenon, but using an augmentative, is -ón:
- soltero "bachelor" → solterón "confirmed bachelor"
- soltera "single woman" → solterona "spinster"
- puerta "door" → portón "gate" / "large door"
Another suffix that can either denote a blow with or be an augmentative is -azo:
- Puerta ("door") → portazo ("slam of a door")
- Mano ("hand") → manotazo ("a hit with the hand")
- Cacerola ("saucepan") → cacerolazo (both "a blow with a saucepan" or "a big saucepan", also a form of protest)
- Caracas (Caracas, capital of Venezuela) → Caracazo (the "Caracazo", the violent protests of 27 February 1989)
- Derecha ("right hand") → derechazo (either a "right-hander" when slapping someone, or a "right-handed pass with the cape" in bullfighting)
- Flecha ("arrow") → flechazo ("arrow shot" / "arrow wound", or figuratively "love at first sight")