Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
In Spanish, as in other Romance languages, all nouns belong to one of two genders, "masculine" or "feminine", and many adjectives change their form to agree in gender with the noun they modify. For most nouns that refer to persons, grammatical gender matches biological gender.
In Spanish, nouns not belonging to the class described above form another class of noun. [1] The gender of nouns in this other class are arbitrarily assigned. However, some general patterns help to predict the gender of nouns. [11] Notably, the endings of nouns give clues to their genders. For instance, nouns ending in -o are usually masculine.
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.').
Below are two estimates of the most common words in Modern Spanish.Each estimate comes from an analysis of a different text corpus.A text corpus is a large collection of samples of written and/or spoken language, that has been carefully prepared for linguistic analysis.
Spanish uno can also be used as a pronoun, like the English generic "one", to represent an indeterminate subject, but this is not possible with Portuguese um; the reflexive pronoun se must be used instead. Se may be used in Spanish to form passive and impersonal constructions, as well. [7] Uno (or Se) debe pensar antes de actuar. (Spanish)
In some countries, the pronoun vos is used with family and friends , like tú in other varieties of Spanish, and contrasts with the respectful usted (V-form used with third person) which is used with strangers, elderly, and people of higher socioeconomic status; appropriate usage varies by dialect.
This is however excepted by proper nouns which can be used adjectivally as in English: contator Geiger 'Geiger counter', motor Diesel 'Diesel engine', radios Röntgen 'Roentgen rays', etc. Despite the above restrictions, Interlingua permits use of apposition, where the two nouns refer to the same thing. arbore nano 'dwarf tree' nave domo 'house ...