Language/Spanish/Grammar/How-to-use-articles-in-spanish

The Use of Articles in Spanish

The article points to the word which it follows in the sentence.

That word determines its gender and number.

It updates the meaning of the name, or on the contrary, generalizes it, giving rise to the following classification:

Determined or definite article

Select from all of its class, to a specific object and previously known by the participants in the conversation.

Examples:

• No olvides las llaves.
• El automóvil nos recogió al amanecer.

	Singular	Plural
Male	el	los
Female	la	las
Neutral	lo

Article indeterminate or indefinite

Refers to beings or objects not identified, either because they are different within a group, example:

• Necesito un lápiz (any lápiz)

Or because they are unknown to the speaker, example:

• Me aguarda una sorpresa

	Singular	Plural
Masculino	un	unos
Femenino	una	unas

        

Singularities of the article against female names

The article matches its endings with the gender and number of the modified word (los niños, la muchacha, el caballo).However before the feminine nouns that begin with “a” o “ha” tonic (Accentuated), the article takes the form “el”

Example:

• El águila – el hacha – el alba – el agua

For its part “una” becomes “un”

Example:

• Un asa – un hambre

This rule does not affect the adjective (la amplia plaza), nor the noun that previously has a complement (la majestuosa águila).

In the same way exceptions are the proper names of women when they are used with article (el Alba (used as name)), as well as the letters of the alphabet (a, la hache)

Contractions al and del 

Preceded by prepositions "a" or "de" the article determined "el" loses its first letter and forms a single word.

Examples:

• He leído solo la portada del (de + el) periódico.

• Trata de mirar al(a + el) punto más alto.

The union is avoided only when "el" is included in a proper name.

Examples:

• Este es el clima característico de El Bierza.