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The prepositions à (' to, at ') and de (' of, from ') form contracted forms with the masculine and plural articles le and les: au, du, aux, and des, respectively.. Like the, the French definite article is used with a noun referring to a specific item when both the speaker and the audience know what the item is.
La is used, however, when el would imply a masculine noun: la ácrata (because el ácrata would be a male anarchist) la árabe (because el árabe would be a male Arab, or the Arabic language) Feminine el is never used, however, before feminine adjectives that begin with a stressed a: la alta montaña = "the high mountain" la ancha calle = "the ...
A few adjectives have a fifth form, viz. an additional masculine singular form for use in liaison before a noun beginning with a vowel or a "mute h", e.g. un beau jardin, un bel homme, une belle femme, de beaux enfants, de belles maisons (a beautiful garden, a handsome man, a beautiful woman, beautiful children, beautiful houses).
The French terminations -ois / ais serve as both the singular and plural masculine; adding 'e' (-oise / aise) makes them singular feminine; 'es' (-oises / aises) makes them plural feminine. The Spanish termination "-o" usually denotes the masculine and is normally changed to feminine by dropping the "-o" and adding "-a". The plural forms are ...
For instance, the feminine form of el soldado 'the (male) soldier' is la soldado 'the (female) soldier', with only the gender of the article (el/la) distinguishing them in this case. For nouns of this class with the masculine form ending in -or , -ón , -ín , -és , and -án , the feminine form adds an -a .
The grammatical gender of a noun affects the form of other words related to it. For example, in Spanish, determiners, adjectives, and pronouns change their form depending on the noun to which they refer. [8] Spanish nouns have two genders: masculine and feminine, represented here by the nouns gato and gata, respectively.
It's also combined with the relative pronouns que and cual to form relative clauses, such as lo que dices, lo cual es cierto, and can also be followed by de, e.g. lo de Juan está aquí, lo de que estoy enfermo no es cierto. Bello also notes that words such as nada, poco, algo, and mucho can be used as neuters in some contexts.
For example, taza (cup) is feminine, so "the red cup" is la taza roja, but vaso (glass) is masculine, so "the red glass" is el vaso rojo. In Spanish, it is perfectly normal to let an adjective stand in for a noun or pronoun—with (where people are involved) no implication of condescension or rudeness.