Articles and grammatical gender
Definite and indefinite articles with nouns.
Use el, la, un, and una with familiar nouns, and recognize their plural forms.
Hear the lesson phrases
Google voice when available; device voice as a fallback.
Read the audio transcript
El libro. Un libro. Los libros. La mesa. Una mesa. Las mesas. El día. La mano. Una casa.
Grammatical gender
Spanish nouns are generally masculine or feminine. This is grammatical gender: it does not mean that an object is male or female. Learn a new noun together with its article, such as el libro or la mesa.
El and la both mean the. Use el with a masculine singular noun and la with a feminine singular noun. Many nouns ending in -o are masculine and many ending in -a are feminine, but these patterns have exceptions.
Día is masculine even though it ends in -a.
Mano is feminine even though it ends in -o.
Definite and indefinite articles
Un and una mean a or an. Use un with a masculine singular noun and una with a feminine singular noun. The choice between un and el is similar to the choice between a and the in English.
An article must match the noun’s grammatical gender. Focus on a small set of useful nouns before trying to memorize every exception.
Plural nouns and articles
The plural forms of el and la are los and las. The plural forms of un and una are unos and unas, often translated as some.
Many nouns ending in a vowel add -s: libro → libros. Many ending in a consonant add -es: profesor → profesores. These are useful starting patterns; some nouns also change their spelling or written accent in the plural.
Lesson vocabulary
Read each word aloud, then test your recall of its meaning.
| el libro | the book | |
| la mesa | the table | |
| la casa | the house | |
| el día | the day | |
| la mano | the hand | |
| el profesor | the male teacher | |
| la profesora | the female teacher | |
| los libros | the books |
Practice questions
Answer the questions and read the explanations. You can repeat the exercises.
Learn el libro, not just libro. The article helps you remember the noun’s grammatical gender from the beginning.