Adjectives: Gender, number and position- Part II

¿Qué es esto?= what is it?

Esto is an adjective that is used to refer to something that is unidentified. While learning Spanish vocabulary, you might hear me ask you that same question often.

In English,  this/these have four forms in Spanish: este, estos, esta, estas.

I'll be talking about este later. For now, it is good for you to know that este has four forms, shown below:

MALE	MALE	FEMALE	FEMALE
este hijo	this  son	esta hija	this daughter
estos hijos	these sons	estas hijas	these daughters

MUCHO and POCO

Both of those words can be used as adjectives or adverbs. Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs= they are invariable in form.

Adverb:

Rosa trabaja mucho. ( Rosa works a lot)

Rosa trabaja poco. (Rosa works a little)

NOTE: that poco means little, a little bit

Adjective:

Rosa tiene muchas amigas. (Rosa has a lot of ( female) friends)

More about the position of the adjectives:

The interrogative adjectives go before the nouns: ¿cuánto dinero?¿cuántas hermanas? ¿cuántos hijos?

MALE		FEMALE
¿cuánto?	How many?  (male singular)	¿cuánta?	How many? (female singular)
¿cuántos?	How many?  (male plural)	¿cuántas?	How many? (female plural)

Bueno, malo, grande may go before the noun you want to modify or describe:

Una niña buena or una buena niña

When bueno, malo and grande are before a masculine noun, then they change to:

bueno to buen and malo to mal.

Un recuerdo bueno. Un buen recuerdo.
Un profesor malo. Un mal profesor.

When grande is placed after the noun, it means large or big. When it goes before a singular noun- masculine or feminine- it is shortened to gran and means great or impressive.

Una ciudad grande. ( A big city.)
Una gran ciudad.( A great city.)

NOTE:

As you know by now, Spanish nouns have genders: male and female. When we want to modify nouns, it is important to remember that adjectives have to agree with the nouns in number and gender ( La niña es bonita. Las niñas son bonitas.). Some Spanish words refer to people are masculine and others are feminine: el individuo, la persona, and so on. The adjectives that modify persona will always be feminine, and those that modify individuo will always be masculine, regardless of the gender of the person that they refer to.

El amigo de Roberto es una persona muy lista.
Elena es una persona muy independiente.
Elena es un individuo muy independiente.