Singular and plural nouns in Spanish I

As we said in a previous lesson, nouns in Spanish have gender and number. We have already been talking about the gender of nouns. Now, we are going to talk about their number.

The number refers to a variation experienced by nouns and the words that agree with them to express, through certain endings, whether they refer to a single entity or to more than one. If the noun refers to a single entity, we say that its number is singular. If the noun used refers to more than one entity, we say that its number is plural.

The singular is the standard form of nouns and is the one that appears in the dictionary. The plural form of a noun is obtained by adding a certain ending to the singular.

When the singular noun ends in a vowel which doesn’t have an accent, we form the plural by adding an "s". Let's see an example:

"Viral: un perro se robó la pelota en pleno partido de Concachampions" (Viral: a dog stole the ball in the middle of the Concachampions match).

"Rescatan a 7 perros que llevaban días sin comer, cuyo propietario ingresó en la cárcel y no podía cuidarlos" (They rescue 7 dogs that had not eaten for days, whose owner went to jail and could not take care of them),

"Robaron pelotas y camisetas en un club de fútbol" (Balls and shirts were stolen from a football club).

in the first newspaper note we have two singular nouns; "perro" (dog) and "pelota"(ball), which appear again in the second and third respectively, but this time in their plural form. As we can see, the singular form ends in a vowel in both cases, so the plural is formed by adding an "s".

Other examples are: libro /  libros (book / books), hombre / hombres (man / men), casa (house) / casas (houses), oveja / ovejas (singular and plural form of ovejas).

This is the rule, then, with respect to nouns ending in vowels that do not have an accent. When singular nouns end in a consonant or in a vowel that have an accent, the plural is formed adding "es"at the end of the word.

Some examples are: pared / paredes (wall / walls), animal / animales (animal / animals), doctor / doctores (doctor / doctors), hotel / hoteles (hotel / hotels), tren / trenes (train / trains).

"Encuentran en la pared de un mercado un insecto gigante de la era Jurásica" (They find a giant insect from the Jurassic era on the wall of a market). 

"Cómo poner cuadros y fotos en las paredes de tu casa" (How to put paintings and photos on the walls of your house).

These two rules cover most of the cases regarding the singular and plural form of Spanish nouns. There are, however, some other cases that we will see in future lessons.