Definite Articles in Spanish – Lesson 6

What are definite articles in Spanish?

In English, there’s only one word for “the”: the car, the house, the cars. Easy. In Spanish, there are four: el, la, los and las. These are called the definite articles.

Which one you use depends on two things about the noun (the thing or person you’re talking about):

• Is it masculine or feminine?
• Is it one thing (singular) or more (plural)?

	Singular	Plural
Masculine	el	los
Feminine	la	las

This lesson is a bit more technical than the others, but it’s super important: you’ll use these four little words in almost every Spanish sentence. So grab your notebook and let’s go!

El and la: masculine and feminine nouns

Let’s start with two words. Car in Spanish is coche, and house is casa. Now look what happens when we say “the”:

Same English word, but two different Spanish words. That’s because in Spanish, every noun is either masculine or feminine. Masculine nouns get el, feminine nouns get la.

Sometimes that’s obvious. A man is masculine, a woman is feminine:

But what about a bed? Is a bed masculine or feminine? There’s no logical way to know. It’s la cama, but it just as well could have been “el cama”. Native speakers know this by heart, because they’ve been saying it their whole lives. For us learners, it’s one of the trickiest parts of Spanish.

Luckily, there are a few rules that help you guess right most of the time.

4 rules to know if a noun is masculine or feminine

Rule 1: nouns ending in -o are usually masculine

Rule 2: nouns ending in -a are usually feminine

Rule 3: nouns ending in -ma are usually masculine

Careful: these end in an a, but they’re masculine! Many of them come from Greek.

Rule 4: nouns ending in -ción are usually feminine

And nouns ending in -e or a consonant? There’s no clear rule for those. El coche (the car) is masculine, but la noche (the night) is feminine. You just have to learn them.

Exceptions to watch out for

These rules work most of the time, but not always. Some common exceptions you’ll see a lot:

The tricky one: el agua

Water is agua. It ends in an a, so you’d expect la agua. But it’s el agua!

Here’s the secret: agua is actually a feminine word. But when a feminine word starts with a stressed “a” sound, Spanish uses el instead of la, simply because “la agua” is hard to say. In the plural it goes back to normal: las aguas. And words that describe it stay feminine too: el agua fría (the cold water).

Los and las: the plural

So far we only talked about one thing: one car, one house. When there are two or more, el and la change:

• el becomes los
• la becomes las

And just like in English, you usually add an -s to the noun:

In English, “the” never changes. In Spanish, the article changes together with the noun. So los and las also tell you right away that there’s more than one.

What about a mixed group?

If a group has both men and women, Spanish uses the masculine plural. So los amigos can mean a group of only male friends, or a group of male and female friends. Los niños can mean “the boys” or simply “the children”.

Recap: el, la, los, las

Spanish	English
el hombre	the man · masculine, singular
los hombres	the men · masculine, plural
la mujer	the woman · feminine, singular
las mujeres	the women · feminine, plural
el niño / los niños	the boy / the boys
■■■■■■■■	■■■■■■■■
■■■■■■■■	■■■■■■■■
■■■■■■■■	■■■■■■■■

+ 7 more words & phrases

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Practice: el, la, los or las?

Use the rules from this lesson. Say your answer out loud, then click to check.

1. ___ libro (the book)

el libro: ends in -o, so masculine.

2. ___ ventana (the window)

la ventana: ends in -a, so feminine.

3. ___ idioma (the language)

el idioma: ends in -ma, so masculine.

4. ___ canción (the song)

la canción: ends in -ción, so feminine.

5. ___ mano (the hand)

la mano: an exception! It ends in -o, but it’s feminine.

6. ___ casas (the houses)

las casas: feminine and plural.

7. ___ zapatos (the shoes)

los zapatos: masculine and plural.

8. ___ agua (the water)

el agua: feminine word, but it starts with a stressed a, so it takes el.

Quiz: el, la, los or las?

Ready? 10 questions to see if you’ve got it.

Frequently asked questions about Spanish articles

Why does Spanish have masculine and feminine words?

Spanish comes from Latin, which already had grammatical gender. It’s just part of the language: it doesn’t mean a table is “female” in any real sense. It’s simply a grammar label that decides which article (and later, which adjective endings) you use.

Is el the same as él?

No! el (no accent) means “the”. él (with an accent) means “he”. They sound the same, so the accent is the only way to tell them apart in writing: él tiene el libro means “he has the book”.

Do I need to memorize the gender of every noun?

Not on purpose. Use the four rules to guess, and learn every new word together with its article. You’ll make mistakes in the beginning, and that’s totally fine: native speakers will still understand you. Over time, the right article starts to sound natural.

What about “a” and “an” in Spanish?

Those are the indefinite articles: un, una, unos, unas. They follow the same masculine/feminine and singular/plural logic. We’ll cover them in a later lesson.

Before you go to the next lesson

Don’t worry if this feels like a lot. Even after years of Spanish, everyone mixes up el and la every now and then. Just remember the four articles, use the rules to guess, and learn new words with their article. Grab the free reference sheet below, so you have everything on one page. ¡Hasta la próxima!