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Spanish Lesson 2

LESSON 2
Expat Spanish Onlne Course
ARTICLE & NOUN
ARTICLE:
Spanish just love their genders and numbers as their articles also show the preference. In English, there’re only three articles. The (for definite) and A and An (for indefinite), but In Spanish they got a lot more articles. El, La, Los. Las (for definite) and  Uno, Una, Unas, Unas (for indefinite)  Except for Unos and Unas, the rest is self-explanatory. Unas and Unas mean SOME  and are always  plural.
Spanish not only loves genders and numbers, but also the true meaning of articles. So, just about every noun must have its article. In English, we break the rules now and then. In other words. they truly adore their formalities. However, there are also a few exceptions for Spanish
Here are the differences:
Spanish has two well-known contraptions. de+el=del and a=el=al for convenience.
Yo voy al banco instead of Yo voy a el banco.
Ella viene de la oficina. Contractions only apply to masculine gender..
Yo soy americano. I am an American. We use the number “a” or “an” all the time. They don’t.
Educacion es necesario para todos los paises del mundo.
The education is necessary for all countries of the world. They skip the article, but we don’t
La señora Lopez esta en la casa.
Mrs. Lopez is home They insist on the article, we don’t
“Señora Lopez, como esta usted?’ When addressing, no need for the article at all.
Salimos de Granada el lunes.
We leave Granada on Monday. They use article for the day of the week, we don’t
Countries do not need the article. Not anymore.
what about that neutral “lo” which appears now and then?
Lo bueno es que no siempre usamos el articulo.
It’s good (handy) that we don’t always use the article
Lo can be used for almost anything that’s neutral You can use it for lo bueno, lo malo, lo interesante, lo peor, etc in short, just about anywhere that you want to say it’s.
NOUN
All nouns are designed for the articles, so say the Latinos.
El continente, la señora, el lapiz (pencil),la democracia. On the other hand, just about all nouns that end in o are masculine and a, feminine. La nacion, la civilizacion, la region, la ciudad (city), la Universidad, la realidad, la libertad, l,a dificultad, la facultad, la costumbre, la legumbre (veggie), la lumbre (wood), etc are feminine. Yet La mano (hand) which ends in o is also feminine. El sistema, el programa, el tema (theme),any word that ends in ma is masculine. However, acta de nacimiento (birth certificate) or el acta is masculine. As I mentioned, there are exceptions in Spanish.
So, you know that anything that deals with name, persons, things, ideas, etc. are nouns as in Spanish or English.
For that purpose, I’d recommend a pocket-sized dictionary that comes with form (masculine or fem- enine) to show you at a glance if it’s f or m.
A noun happens to be a noun in any language. On the other hand, it helps to know the nouns. So, I strongly suggest that you make use of that dictionary.