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The usually-masculine form el is used instead of la before feminine nouns that begin with a stressed a (or rarely, au) sound (as well as, in principle, ai although such words are almost never found in practice): el águila (pequeña) = "the (small) eagle" el agua (fresca) = "the (fresh) water" el hacha (afilada) = "the (sharp) axe"
When que is used as the object of a preposition, the definite article is added to it, and the resulting form (el que) inflects for number and gender, resulting in the forms el que, la que, los que, las que and the neuter lo que. Unlike in English, the preposition must go right before the relative pronoun "which" or "whom":
The definite article is le, the indefinite article is un, and neither article shows any agreement in form with nouns.The prepositions a ("to") and de ("of") fuse with a following le into al and del respectively.
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').
The definite article can also be used in English to indicate a specific class among other classes: The cabbage white butterfly lays its eggs on members of the Brassica genus. However, recent developments show that definite articles are morphological elements linked to certain noun types due to lexicalization. Under this point of view ...
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For example, a diminutive form of el coche 'car' is el cochecito 'baby carriage' while the diminutive form of el carro 'car' formed from the same suffix is el carrito 'shopping cart'. Some Spanish nouns can take a large number of affective suffixes, creating words with subtle differences in meaning or connotation.
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