Spanish · Chapter 1 · Lesson 7 · Grammar primer
Spanish articles: when to use which
Definite vs indefinite, masculine vs feminine, singular vs plural - the agreement rules and the cases where Spanish uses an article and English doesn't (and vice versa).
The short version
When in doubt, keep the Spanish article
Spanish uses an article in five places English drops it: general statements about a class, abstract nouns, days of the week, languages after most verbs, and body parts. Me gustan los perros is I like dogs, not the dogs. You will be wrong less often by over-articulating than by under-articulating.
Me gustan los perros.
Where Spanish drops the article and English keeps it
After ser plus a profession, nationality or religion with no adjective, Spanish leaves the article out: es médico. The profession is behaving more like an adjective than a noun. Add a modifier and the article comes straight back: es un médico excelente.
Es médico.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
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