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Demonstrative adjectives are those little words that we use to describe nouns with relation to where we are;
it is the difference between ‘this’ and ‘that’ in English.
Location deixis is the fancy way of talking about the difference between the words ‘here’ and ‘there’.
These small words might seem insignificant at first,
but they add color and character to our descriptions.
In this video, we will learn about their differences.
To start off, let’s look at demonstrative adjectives.
In English, we are talking about the difference between ‘this’, ‘that’, and ‘yonder’.
Ok, probably for most of us ‘yonder’ is not in our daily vocabulary,
but most of us know what it refers to: something that is way over there, very far away.
Obviously, in English we used to use all three of these adjectives,
but nowadays we usually only have the first two in our repertoire.
And since they are adjectives, in Spanish they have to agree in gender and number with the noun that they modify.
This happens across the board.
As you look at these demonstrative adjectives, no doubt that the endings look somewhat familiar, and perhaps are even expected,
except for the masculine singular ones.
They do not end in –o.
What happened there?
Well, we will see that those have a different role to play.
So the demonstrative adjectives are:
este, esta, estos, estas;
ese, esa, esos, esas;
and, aquel, aquella, aquellos, aquellas.
Let’s put them into practice in order to better understand them.
Here we see Mario.
Mario regresa de la universidad, y va a su casa.
¿Pero cuál es su casa?
¿Es esta casa?
¿O quizás esa casa?
¿O tal vez aquella casa?
As you can see, each demonstrative adjective is relative to Mario, since he is the focal point of this dialogue;
the one closest to him is ‘this house’, ‘esta casa’.
The one further away from him is ‘that house’, ‘esa casa’.
And the one waaaaaaaaaay over there, ‘yonder house’, that one is ‘aquella casa’.
We can also talk about location deixis, or talk about Mario going here, aquí,
there, allí or allá,
or way over there, más allá.
There are a few other words that can be used for ‘here’ and ‘there,’ and the variation is based on dialect.
But these terms here will always be understood by Spanish-speakers.
Again, these terms ‘here’, ‘there’, and ‘way over there’ are all relative to Mario, as he is the focal point.
I did not forget about esto, eso, and aquello.
They are demonstrative adjectives, but they never go next to a noun.
That is because they are considered neutral, or neuter, demonstrative adjectives.
Now, Spanish does not have a third gender, per se.
But this is a way to use these demonstrative adjectives and not refer to any one specific noun—
because if we did, we would have to use the gender of that noun.
But if we are talking about a general idea,
or a general concept,
these neuter demonstrative adjectives come in very handy.
Same thing if we want to refer to the entire context of a conversation.
And what happens if we travel and we want to know the name of something…
but we have zero idea of what it is called, and therefore do not know the gender?
We can use these demonstrative adjectives to ask what this or that is
and do so in a way that does not require us to incorrectly label the gender.
The great thing about these demonstrative adjectives is that we use them all the time,
and they are easy to insert into the conversation for practice.
Try it out, and you will soon be using them with ease.
Please like the video and leave any comments or questions that you have.
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¡Hasta pronto! ¡Adiós!