Spanish Determiner

Definition: In spanish uses determiners in a similar way to english. The main difference is that that they agree in gender and number with the noun. Types of determiners include articles, possessive adjectives, demonstrative adjectives and quantifier.

Articles
Definite articles: An article that makes a noun refer to a particular item or items of its class.

the man = “el hombre”
the men = “los hombres”
the woman = “la mujer”
the women = “las mujeres”

An article that makes a noun refer to a nonspecific item (or items) of its class.

a man = “un hombre"
a woman = “una mujer”
some men = “unos hombres”
some women = “unas mujeres”

Possessive determiners: Possessive adjectives agree with the nouns they modify. There are five possessive adjectives. mi, tu, su, nuestro, vuestro

Note the following:
  • There is no distinction in number for the third person possessives (i.e. between "his"/"her"/"its" and "their").

  • The possessive for usted and ustedes is su(s) as for other third-person pronouns. The ambiguity that this causes (especially considering that su(s) already covers "his", "her", "its" and "their") can be allieviated by treating usted(es) as a noun and thereby saying la casa de ustedes instead of su casa. It is also possible to disambiguate by saying la casa de él or la casa de ella, etc.

    Combining demonstratives and possessives
    Are those adjectives whose function is to point at something. Spanish has three sets of demonstrative adjectives, which vary by number and gender, so there are 12 in all.

  • este, esta, estos, estas
  • ese, esa, esos, esas
  • aquel, aquella, aquellos, aquellas

    This man here is very tall
    Este hombre aquí es muy alto.


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