Articles [17]
There is something called an article in language. And we break articles into two groups: definite and indefinite. There are two groups because they do two different things.
Think about the difference between these two sentences:
Juan, find the cat, now.
Juan, find a cat, now.
In the first sentence, Juan must know exactly which cat the speaker is asking him to find. Juan already has a context, and so saying “the cat” makes sense to him—he knows exactly which cat to find. The same thing happens to you if I say “look at the moon.” We share the same reference point. You will not point your telescope to Jupiter’s moons, for example.
‘The’ is the only definite article of English. In Spanish, there are four versions of ‘the,’ thanks to the gender and number of nouns. Observe:
The woman: La mujer
The man: El hombre
The women: Las mujeres
The men: Los hombres
Those are the definite articles. They go before a noun that is pre-defined—something we can all recognize without an explanation.
(Think about what happens when someone says to you: “Hey, remember that movie, the one with the guy?” And you think to yourself, “What guy?” You’re missing the context and the word that is supposed to point you somewhere, cannot.)
The second sentence asked Juan to find a cat, which means any cat. This is called an indefinite article. That means the noun it precedes is not pre-defined, it doesn’t come from any previous context.
When someone in a crowd has a heart attack, people shout for a doctor. The idea is that any doctor will do (even if that is true or not). In English there are actually three of these: a, an, some. (Remember that an is just another version of a.)
A man: Un hombre
A woman: Una mujer
(Some) men: (Unos) hombres
(Some) women: (Unas) mujeres
The reason unos and unas are in parenthesis is because people often skip saying them. You would say to Juan, “I need cats for the photo” more often than “I need some cats for the photo.”
In summation, these are the 8 words you need to learn:
EL, LA, LOS, LAS
UN, UNA, UNOS, UNAS
These are the relationships you need to learn:
EL becomes LOS
LA becomes LAS
UN becomes UNOS
UNA becomes UNAS
That happens when the noun is pluralized.
Next time, I’m going to connect this lesson to the word Hay.
Bonus: Make sure you know the difference between el and él.