Learn Spanish by reading headlines: ARTICLES (II) THE RULES FOR DEFINITE ARTICLES (EL, LOS, LA, LAS)

As we see in a previous post, articles are small words that accompany nouns and implicitly provide us with certain information about such nouns.  If we want to specifically identify what we are talking about, we must place a definite article before the noun, if not an indefinite one. 

In this lesson we are going to focus on the definite article and we are going to talk about the other two variables that intervene in the choice of articles and nouns; their gender and number. Regarding gender, the articles tell us if a noun is masculine or feminine. Regarding number, they tell us if the noun is singular or plural.

Unlike what happens in English, where "the" is the only definite article, in Spanish there are four, which we use according to the following scheme::

Let's see this with some examples:

"El presidente Joe Biden llega a Polonia" (President Joe Biden arrives in Poland). 

In this headline, the article "el" indicates two things about the noun "presidente"; that it is masculine, and that it is singular. Now, what would happen if instead of having a singular noun (presidente), we had a plural one (presidentes)? Let's see an example:

"EEUU celebra el Día de los Presidentes" (USA celebrates Presidents Day). In this case, the noun is still masculine, but now appears in the plural. Therefore, according to the uses shown in the table, we need the article "los". Below we show two examples of the remaining cases, in which the nouns appear in the feminine singular and plural respectively:

"La Reina Sofía, muy aclamada en su regreso a España" (Queen Sofía, highly acclaimed on her return to Spain). "Reina" (Queen) is a feminine noun, so the article to use is "la". If the noun, in addition to being feminine, is also plural, we use "las" before it, as shown in the following example:

"Todas las reinas de Inglaterra" (All the queens of england)

In the next lesson we are going to do the same analysis for the case of indefinite articles.

Listen to the content of this post in Spanish in the following video.