Hola a tod@s y bienvenid@s de nuevo a un blog sobre Spanish Grammatical Number. In previous posts we talked about grammatical agreement (feminine or masculine) in nouns. We will look at number agreement between these same words. In this post we are going to explain the grammatical number of nouns. All nouns have singular and plural (although there are always exceptions to this rule).
Spanish grammatical number is a characteristic grammatical property of nouns and other words such as adjectives, determinants, etc. It can be singular (casa) or plural (casas). In the case of nouns (substantives), the number tells us if there are one or more beings.
The singular does not have any special form. However, plurals can vary greatly, although they are generally formed by adding -s or -es to the end of words in the singular form.
There are some general rules for forming plurals:
- Nouns ending in an unstressed  vowels (-a, -e, -i, -o, -u) and in -á, -é, -ó, form the plural with -s. For example.
La oreja 👂 – las orejas 👂👂           (Accented vowel)  El sofá 🛋 – los sofás 🛋 🛋
El coche – los coches.                 (Accented vowel)  El café – los cafés.
El alioli – los aliolis
El número – los números.             (Accented vowel)   El dominó – los dominós.
El espÃritu – los espÃritus
- Nouns ending in -Ã, -ú, form the plural with -s and -es.
El bisturà– los bisturÃs – los bisturÃes
El iglú – los iglús – los iglúes
¡Cuidado!
Excepciones: el esquà – los esquÃs / el menú – los menús / el champú – los champús
- Nouns ending in consonant are formed with the plural -es. Except for words ending in -as, -es, -is, -os, -us (atones), these words do not change. Words that end in -z, change z> c when they form the plural. For example.
El limón – los limones           El paraguas – los paraguas
El árbol – los árboles             El lunes – los lunes
El alud – los aludes              El análisis – los análisis
La flor – las flores               El rascacielos – los rascacielos
El paÃs – los paÃses              El virus – los virus
El francés – los franceses
La ley – las leyes                El pez – los peces
- Proper nouns are rarely used in the plural, but if it’s necessary to do so, it is done the same way as discussed above with common nouns. In the case of compound nouns, only the second becomes plural. For example.
Hay una Ana en mi clase.     (compound nouns) Hay una Ana MarÃa en mi clase.
Hay tres Anas en mi clase.     (compound nouns) Hay tres Ana MarÃas en mi clase.
Therefore, the words that accompany the nouns must agree with them in number. Plural nouns must be must be accompanied by adjectives and determinants that are also plural. For example.
El coche rojo – Los coches rojos.
Mi mesa es grande. – Mis mesas son grandes.
I hope you enjoyed this explanation of Spanish grammar. Keep learning more about Spanish and Hispanic culture on this blog.