Spanish determiners


The Spanish language uses determiners in a similar way to English. The main differences are that Spanish determiners inflect for gender and always inflect for number as well.

Demonstrative determiners

The Spanish has three kinds of demonstrative, whose use typically depends on the distance between the speaker and the described entity, or sometimes it depends on the proximity to the three grammatical persons.
DemonstrativesProximalMedialDistal
Masculine singularesteeseaquel
Masculine pluralestosesosaquellos
Feminine singularestaesaaquella
Feminine pluralestasesasaquellas

Old English also used to have a three-way system: "this hill ", "that hill " or "yon hill " — in Spanish, "esta colina", "esa colina", "aquella colina". Standard English lost the third level, so that the "that, there" series covers the ground of "yon, yonder".
Este usually refers to something near the speaker. Ese usually refers to something nearer the listener. Aquel usually refers to something away from both the speaker and the listener.
The demonstrative determiners can also be used as pronouns, with the addition of the neutral singular forms esto, eso, aquello.
A similar three-way system of demonstratives is found in Portuguese as well as Slavic languages, Japanese and Turkish.

Articles

Definite article

The definite article in Spanish, corresponding to "the", is el. It inflects for gender and number as follows:
Thus:
The usually masculine form el is used instead of la before feminine nouns that begin with a stressed a sound :
La is used, however, when el would imply a masculine noun:
Feminine el is never used, however, before feminine adjectives that begin with a stressed a:
Azúcar is a very special case. Its a- is unstressed, and yet it usually takes el even when feminine; in addition, azúcar can be of both genders in Spanish, mar and sartén ):
Feminine el does not have the same origin as the masculine el. The latter is from the Old Castilian ele, whereas the former is from ela, just as la is.
There is also a neuter article that is used before adjectives and makes them work like nouns:
The indefinite article in Spanish, corresponding to "a/an", is un. It inflects for gender and number as follows:
Thus:
Near synonyms of unos include unos cuantos, algunos and unos pocos.
The same rules that apply to feminine el apply to una and un:
As in English, the plural indefinite article is not always required:
These are often known as possessive or genitive determiners. They are used before the noun they possess. They inflect for number and in some cases gender as well.
1st-person singular2nd-person singular3rd-person singular1st-person plural2nd-person plural3rd-person plural
Masculine singularmitusunuestrovuestrosu
Feminine singularmitusunuestravuestrasu
Masculine pluralmistussusnuestrosvuestrossus
Feminine pluralmistussusnuestrasvuestrassus

For example:
Given the ambiguous meaning of "su/s", this is often avoided, and replaced by other forms that clearly state who owns the thing in question. So sentences like the following can be heard:
Or even:
Note the following:
Dialectal variation:
Demonstrative pronouns can be combined with possessives as follows:
Strictly speaking, the presence of the first determiner means that the possessive must be interpreted as an adjective rather than a determiner. Note however that the long adjectival form, which is identical to the corresponding possessive pronoun, is not used in this construction, which is rather uncommon.
It is also possible to use the long adjectival form. In this case, it goes after the noun:
There are many more words that can be used as determiners in Spanish. They mostly end in -o and have the usual four forms to agree with the noun.