USES OF SPANISH ADJECTIVES WITH NOUNS What Jobs Do Adjectives Do?
2.6 A Practical Approach: When Adjectives Count
This section emphasizes the importance of understanding idiomatic expressions and how they relate to the use of adjectives. It will give you a deeper understanding of the role adjectives play when used in context for the purpose of communication.
Every language uses phrases or expressions that are difficult for a non-native speaker to understand. The illustrations below show examples of two English expressions that a Spanish-speaking person would not necessarily understand.
Language is
Communication
Spanish, like English, has many idiomatic expressions. Although their literal translations sound odd to English speakers, they sound perfectly natural to native speakers, just like
“You’re driving me up the wall!” sounds perfectly natural to an English speaker.
Bienvenidos! Bienvenida,
Anna! Bienvenido,
Andy!
Welcome, Anna!
Welcome!
Welcome, Andy!
To help you understand this type of idiomatic expression, read the following three definitions of idioms.
1. A phrase or expression that means something different from what the words actually say. An idiom is usually understandable to a particular group of people.
2. An expression that cannot be immediately understood by analyzing its literal meaning.
3. A group of words that, taken as a whole, has a meaning different from that of the sum of the individual words.
Let’s analyze the example of expressing “you’re welcome.”
In Spanish, one way to express this idea is the use of de nada.
Nada basically means “nothing.” De nada translates as
“don’t mention it” or “you’re welcome” in English.
If you look up the word “welcome” in an English-Spanish dictionary and find the word bienvenido, you might think it means “you’re welcome.” However, that is not the case.
The following examples show how the term bienvenido is used.
The Miller family visits Maria in
Mexico!
As the examples show, the adjective bienvenido is generally used as a welcoming greeting. If it is used to address a male (Andy) it takes the form bienvenido. Addressing Anna, a female, it is changed to bienvenida. For a group of mixed gender, use bienvenidos to show the plural. If you have a group of girls, use bienvenidas. The adjective must match the noun it refers to in both number and gender.
Anna, Andy, and their parents could each say “thank you”
in response to Maria’s warm welcome.
Thank you could be one way of translating muchas gracias.
Would you agree that the English translation of many thanks is a lot closer to the Spanish way of saying thanks? By using many thanks, you focus on the plural form of gracias. Muchas is the feminine plural form of the adjective mucho (much).
You could also express It is a pleasure to meet you. That idiomatic expression also uses mucho.
Depending on what time the Miller family arrives, each member could respond with the following general greetings that refer to the specific time of the day.
Muchas gracias.
Muchas gracias.
Thank you. / Many thanks.
Mucho
gusto. Mucho gusto.
It is a pleasure to meet you.
(Literally, Much pleasure.)
!
Hint: Can you tell by the form of mucho that the noun that follows will be masculine singular? If you can, you are well on your way to understanding how adjectives and nouns must match in number and gender.12 1
¿Hace buen tiempo?
No, hace mal tiempo.
¿Hacebuentiempo?
Is the weather good?
Hacemuchocalor.
It’s very hot.
Hacemuchosol.
It’s very sunny.
Hacepococalor.
It’s hardly warm.
Hacepocosol.
It’s hardly sunny.
No, hacemaltiempo.
No, the weather is bad.
Are you able to recognize the different adjective forms buenos and buenas? If you do, you understand that the masculine noun día requires the masculine form of the adjective bueno.
In Spanish, this greeting is used in the plural. Buenos matches días. The two other greetings are both based on feminine nouns:
la tarde and la noche. For both, you must change the adjective to buena. The afternoon and the night must also be used in the plural. Buenas tardes and buenas noches are the correct matches.
In Spanish, there are a number of idiomatic expressions with the verb hacer (literal meaning, to do or to make) that are used to describe the weather.
Focus on two adjectives introduced in Part One of this chapter:
buen and mal. Both are placed before the noun.
When talking about the weather, you can use mucho to emphasize nouns like calor (heat) or sol (sun). As a contrast, you can use the adjective poco (little) to stress a lesser degree of quality for the nouns. We include common English
translations for each example.
While the adjective mucho is usually translated as much or a lot of, and the adjective poco is usually translated as little, translating Spanish idioms is a challenge when you want to find appropriate words. A literal translation is possible, but it often
¿Qué tiempo hace en los Estados Unidos?
What's the weather like in the United States?
makes no sense. You might find an English translation that better expresses the meaning for an English speaker. It’s very hot and It’s very sunny express the Spanish meaning clearly, as do It’s hardly warm and It’s hardly sunny. These sentences use the English adverbs very and hardly rather than the English adjectives much and little, which sound awkward.
We will end this chapter by explaining what to expect next.
The sequence of chapters plays an important role in setting the stage for learning basic language skills.
2.7 Details About Chapter Sequence
We have now covered two important parts of speech: nouns and adjectives. You know that nouns are the names of persons, places, and things, and you know that adjectives are words that add meaning to nouns.
While you were learning about adjectives in this chapter, you had a chance to review what you already knew about nouns.
Your next step will be to progress from nouns to pronouns.
Pronouns take the place of nouns, and they build on what you have learned in Chapters 1 and 2.
Although the different kinds of pronouns will be new to you, the jobs that they do will be familiar. The form changes from noun to pronoun, but the function remains the same: Both nouns and pronouns are used as subjects and as objects within a sentence.
Since you have already learned what kind of jobs nouns can do, it will be easy to transfer that knowledge to pronouns.
In this chapter, you became more familiar with the two concepts of number and gender in your study of adjectives. These concepts will be very important in your study of pronouns.
You are now ready to begin Chapter 3, Pronouns.
Jake he Jake él
Nouns Adjectives Pronouns