Learn the answer to the question 'Why are there short forms?'
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| Ask a Teacher, Lesson 10 - Why do some Spanish adjectives and words have a shortened form? |
| Hi everybody! Rosa here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher where I’ll answer some of your most common Spanish questions. |
| The question for this lesson is… |
| Why do some Spanish adjectives and words have a shortened form? |
| Some Spanish adjectives have a shortened form. We call this form apócope or in English "apocope." This means the suppression of some sounds in the final part of a word. |
| Most adjectives lose their last vowel, for example o, when they’re placed before a singular masculine noun. |
| Sound confusing? Don’t worry There are only a few types of these adjectives in Spanish. Most of them are commonly used and will be easy for you to remember. |
| Here they are-- |
| bueno meaning "good" becomes buen |
| malo meaning "bad" becomes mal |
| alguno meaning "some" becomes algún |
| ninguno meaning "none" becomes ningún and |
| grande meaning "big" becomes gran |
| Let’s go through some examples so you can learn how to use the shortened forms of these Spanish adjectives. |
| First up, He comprado un buen libro, "I bought a good book." |
| In this sentence, the word bueno meaning “good” gets shortened to buen because it was placed for the masculine singular noun libro, meaning “book.” |
| Another example would be-- |
| Estoy teniendo un mal año, meaning "I'm having a bad year." |
| Again, in this sentence the word malo “bad” becomes mal because it’s placed before the masculine singular noun año meaning “year.” |
| You can also see this shortened form with ordinal and numeral adjectives like-- |
| Primero, "first," becomes primer, and tercero, “third” becomes tercer. With numerals it sounds like this-- |
| Uno, meaning “one," becomes un and ciento, meaning “hundred," becomes cien. |
| Let’s go through some more examples! |
| He escrito mi primer libro, literally meaning “I had written my first book." |
| Again, we have the masculine singular noun libro, “book,” so primero meaning “first” gets shortened to primer. |
| Another example would be-- |
| Tengo un perro pequeño, “I have a little dog.” Here, the word perro “dog” is in its singular masculine form, so uno “one” gets shortened to un. |
| Remember that these adjectives only lose the final vowel when they are placed before a singular masculine noun. If placed after the noun or if the noun is feminine, their vowel will remain intact! |
| How was this lesson? Pretty interesting right? |
| Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them! |
| ¡Hasta luego! “See you later!” |
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