Spanish articles for English speakers: same idea, different rules

Here English gives you a head start: it has articles, so the idea of "the" and "a" is already in your head. Roughly, el / la is "the" and un / una is "a". The mistakes come where the two languages disagree. Spanish puts "the" where English has nothing, and drops "a" where English insists on it. These slips rarely stop anyone understanding you, but they are what makes Spanish sound translated from English.

Eight forms instead of two

Spanish articles agree with the noun in gender and number, so "the" has four forms and "a" has four:

The noun decides: -o usually means el, -a usually la, with exceptions like el día and la mano. That is why the course teaches nouns together with articles, gender and number, and why it pays to learn la mesa rather than mesa. How gender works is in Gender and two past tenses.

Unos / unas means "some" or "about": unos amigos ["some friends"], unas dos horas ["some two hours" (= about two hours)].

Two contractions are compulsory, in writing too: a + el becomes al, de + el becomes del. Voy al mercado ["(I) go to-the market"], la puerta del coche ["the door of-the car"]. Nothing merges with la or los: Voy a la playa, la casa de los abuelos.

Things in general take el

This is the big one. English drops the article when it talks about something in general: "I like coffee", "Dogs are loyal", "Life is short". Spanish uses the definite article:

• Me gusta el café ["To-me pleases the coffee"];
• Los perros son leales ["The dogs are loyal"];
• La vida es corta ["The life is short"];
• El tiempo es oro ["The time is gold"].

Abstract nouns work the same way: el amor ("love"), la libertad ("freedom").

But when you mean an unspecified amount, "some coffee" or just "coffee" in a shopping list, Spanish has no article either:

• Bebo café ["(I) drink coffee"];
• Compro pan ["(I) buy bread"];
• No hay leche ["Not there-is milk"].

So it's Me gusta el pan but Compro pan. The whole category, the thing as such: el. Some of it: nothing. This contrast is a point of its own in the course table, with an article or without.

Days and times

With days of the week, the article does the work of English "on": El lunes tengo clase ["The Monday (I) have class" (= on Monday)], Los sábados juego al tenis ["The Saturdays (I) play at-the tennis" (= on Saturdays)]. No preposition. After ser, though, the day goes bare: Hoy es lunes ["Today is Monday"].

Dates and clock times take the article too: el 5 de mayo ["the 5 of May"], a las tres ["at the three" (= at three o'clock)], Son las diez ["(They) are the ten" (= it's ten o'clock)]. All of it sits in one point of the table, days, months and dates.

People with titles

When you talk about someone with a title, Spanish adds the article English doesn't: El señor García no está ["The mister García not is" (= Mr García isn't in)], La doctora López llega a las nueve ["The doctor López arrives at the nine"]. When you speak to them, it goes: Buenos días, señor García.

The body and your clothes: "the", not "my"

English says "my head hurts" and "wash your hands". Spanish usually shows the owner with a pronoun and uses the definite article for the thing:

• Me duele la cabeza ["To-me hurts the head"];
• Me lavo las manos ["Myself (I) wash the hands"];
• Ponte la chaqueta ["Put-on-yourself the jacket"].

Me duele mi cabeza is understood, but me already says whose head it is, so mi sounds foreign.

Where English has "a" and Spanish doesn't

• Jobs, nationality and religion after ser: Soy profesora ["(I) am teacher"], Es ingeniero ["(He) is engineer"], Es canadiense ["(She) is Canadian"]. Add an adjective and the article comes back: Es un ingeniero muy bueno ["(He) is an engineer very good"].
• Otro: otro café ["other coffee" (= another coffee)], never un otro.
• Hundred, thousand, half: cien euros ["hundred euros"], mil personas ["thousand people"], media hora ["half hour"].
• Exclamations: ¡Qué día! ["What day!"].
• Things you'd normally have one of, in questions and negatives: ¿Tienes coche? ["Have-you car?"], No tengo perro ["Not (I) have dog"].

El agua: a feminine word with el

Feminine nouns that begin with a stressed a- or ha- take el in the singular, so that two stressed "a" sounds don't run together: el agua, el águila ("the eagle"), el hambre ("the hunger"). The noun is still feminine, and the adjective shows it: el agua fría ["the water cold"]. In the plural everything is back to normal: las aguas. Unstressed a- changes nothing: la amiga.

How to make it stick

Learn every noun with its article, and half of these mistakes never happen. The other half only goes with speaking. Reading, you see the article; speaking, you build the sentence on English patterns, and that's exactly when "I like coffee" comes out as Me gusta café.

In the course, the contrast between el, un and no article is practised in chapter A1-04, Comer, pedir y comprar ["To-eat, to-order and to-buy"], on the A1 page: ordering, liking, buying, the situations where the choice actually comes up. The rest is review: an article you drop in a sentence comes back as a card until it stops dropping.