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Generally, nouns ending in -á, -é, and -ó add -s to form the plural, [43] while nouns ending in -í and -ú can admit both variants (-s and -es) to form the plural. [44] For example, el café 'café' has the plural form los cafés while the noun el tabú 'taboo' has the plural forms los tabús and los tabúes.
The Spanish conjunctions y ('and') and o ('or') alter their form in both spoken and written language to e and u respectively when followed by an identical vowel sound. Thus, padre e hijo ('father and son'), Fernando e Isabel ('Ferdinand and Isabella'), sujeto u objeto ('subject or object'), vertical u horizontal ('vertical or horizontal').
Spanish verbs are conjugated in three persons, each having a singular and a plural form. In some varieties of Spanish, such as that of the Río de la Plata Region, a special form of the second person is used. Spanish is a pro-drop language, meaning that subject pronouns are often omitted.
Contacts with other languages throughout its history have yielded many dialects and varieties with unique vocabulary and grammar. [4] As of 2023, almost 600 million people speak Spanish, making it the fourth-most-spoken language, after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi, and the most-spoken Romance language in the world. [5] [6]
Similarly, the participle agrees with the subject when it is used with ser to form the "true" passive voice (e.g. La carta fue escrita ayer 'The letter was written [got written] yesterday.'), and also when it is used with estar to form a "passive of result", or stative passive (as in La carta ya está escrita 'The letter is already written.').
Spanish is a pro-drop language with respect to subject pronouns, and, like many European languages, Spanish makes a T-V distinction in second person pronouns that has no equivalent in modern English. Object pronouns can be both clitic and non-clitic, with non-clitic forms carrying greater emphasis.
Spanish is a pro-drop language with respect to subject pronouns. Like French and other languages with the T–V distinction, Spanish has a distinction in its second person pronouns that has no equivalent in modern English. Object pronouns come in two forms: clitic and non-clitic, or stressed.
Base form Apocopic form Environment alguno ("some") algún: before masculine singular nouns bueno ("good") buen: before masculine singular nouns ciento ("hundred") cien: before nouns and, in composite numbers, before numbers greater than or equal to mil ("thousand") cualquiera ("whatever", singular) cualesquiera (plural) cualquier cualesquier ...