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¡Hola! Welcome to Spanish class. Today, we will learn how words work together like a team!
In Spanish, describing words must match the person or thing they talk about. We call this noun-adjective agreement or concordancia (cohn-cohr-DAHN-see-ah). If a noun is masculine, its adjective must be masculine too.
Spanish words have gender. Words for boys or masculine things often end in -o, like el gato (the male cat). Words for girls or feminine things often end in -a, like la gata (the female cat).
Adjectives must change their endings to match the noun. To describe a male cat as black, we say el gato negro (the black cat). For a female cat, we change the ending to -a and say la gata negra.
What if we have more than one? We must also make words plural! If we have two male cats, we add -s to both words to get los gatos negros (the black cats).
How do you translate the phrase 'the yellow book' into Spanish? The word for book is 'libro' (masculine) and yellow is 'amarillo'.
- Find the gender of the noun. The noun is 'libro' (book). Since it ends in -o, it is a masculine noun.
- Pick the correct word for 'the'. For a single masculine noun, we use 'el' (the). Now we have 'el libro'.
- Look at the adjective 'amarillo' (yellow). It already ends in -o, which matches our masculine noun 'libro'.
- Put them in the correct Spanish order. In Spanish, the adjective usually goes AFTER the noun. So, we write 'el libro amarillo'.
- Check your work. 'El' (masculine), 'libro' (masculine), and 'amarillo' (masculine) all match perfectly!
