Welcome back to Lengua Franca!
Ok, we have talked about gender with respect to nouns,
and we talked about adjectives and agreement.
Part of agreement is number, meaning making nouns (and their modifiers) singular or plural.
It is a fairly easy process in Spanish, perhaps easier than in English!
How do we pluralize nouns?
For nouns that end in a vowel, you simply add an –s to the end — no exceptions.
For example, niño is singular, but niños is plural;
mapa is singular, mapas is plural;
camino is singular, caminos is plural.
If the noun ends in a consonant, then you add an –es — again, no exceptions.
For example: color is singular, colores is plural;
ciudad is singular, ciudades is plural;
lección is singular, lecciones is plural.
Note that the accent mark on lección goes away when pluralized;
more on accent marks later in a different video.
And remember, everything in the noun phrase will agree with the noun, both in gender and in number.
That means that the article has to match the noun.
As a result, el will be los in the plural,
la will be las,
un will be unos,
and una will be unas.
One last note: what happens when we want to talk about a group of people?
Which gender do we use?
In Spanish, the default gender is masculine;
it has nothing to do with dominance or any other social factor.
It simply means that many borrowed words come into Spanish with masculine gender,
and when talking about a group of people, if there is a mixed-gender group, the gender of the noun will be masculine.
For example, los niños means ‘the children’;
it could be a group of children of mixed gender, or it could be a group of boys.
Same thing with los estudiantes; it could refer to a mixed group of students, or a group of male students.
How do you know?
Context!
Based on the flow of the dialogue, it is understood whether the group in question is all male, or if it is a mixed group.
Ladies, we get our own special distinction.
When the group in questions is all female, the feminine plural is used to describe the group.
For example, las niñas can only mean ‘the girls’;
there cannot be any boys in the group with that designation.
Similarly, las estudiantes really does refer to a group of female students; no males in the group.
By the way, as we expand our concepts of gender and inclusivity, this is a changing and fluid concept…socially.
When it comes to grammar, there is not much changing, at least not at this time.
The general rule is, use the gender agreement that you identify with.
The same is true for groups: use the gender that best fits the group.
Ok, that is the last of the three-part series on Noun Phrases.
We have covered quite a lot of information in these videos,
but this information will help you form a solid base with respect to nouns and their modifiers: adjectives and articles.
Please like the video and leave any comments or questions that you have.
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¡Hasta pronto! ¡Adiós!