Dec
20
¿Tienes coche? How to use articles in Spanish, Part 1
With all the things we English speakers have to contend with when learning Spanish, there’s one thing many of us think we don’t have to worry about and that’s when to use the definite and indefinite articles in Spanish. After all, in many cases, the use of these articles are the same in English as in Spanish. But it turns out there are some key important differences, some of which even advanced students of the language frequently forget.
So in this installment of “Get it Right! Spanish tips,” I’m going to give you a quick primer on when to use the definite and indefinite articles in Spanish and when to leave them aside. Sharpen your pencils, get a blank sheet of paper and start taking notes. 
Photo by Code Poet and used under Creative Commons license.
Just to be clear about what we’re talking about here, the definite articles are el, la, los, las and the indefinite articles are un, una, unos, unas.
With the verb tener, you don’t need the article when you are referring to an object, a service or a relationship that a person has.
Juan tiene coche. (Juan has a car.) ¿Tienes novia? (Do you have a girlfriend?) ¿Tienes hora? (Do you have the time? Do you know what time it is?) Tengo cita con el dentista a las 12. (I have an appointment with the dentist at noon.)
In some cases, Spanish uses the articles where English doesn’t and vice versa. That’s why it can be so confusing to remember which is which.
Rule of thumb: When you are referring to a general concept, an idea of all things that belong to a specific category, then you need the article.
Example: El pescado es un alimento muy sano. Fish is a very healthy food. (The sentence is referring to fish in general, not a particular type of fish.)
La música clásica es muy elegante. Classical music is very elegant. (Referring to classical music in general.)
But those articles get dropped the second you start talking about only one part of something, or one thing that represents a broader idea. Stay with me here. I know this is getting a little bit dense.
For example: Esto es vida [This is the life.] In Spanish, this statement refers to a particular situation in life.
Así es la vida. (That’s life.) In Spanish, this response is a statement about life in general.
[Thanks to reader Molly for helping me rewrite this passage. See reader comments below for more details.]
See the difference? Post a comment if any of this is unclear. Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll continue this look at Spanish articles another day. Trust me, this first part is the hardest part. The other aspects of Spanish articles are much easier to grasp but I didn’t want to bog down this post with too much info at one time. ¡Hasta pronto!
Your explaination or the general and specific categories and the use of articles would make more sense to me if the examples about life had been made via further examples about music.
Thanks,
kmf
kmf,
I’m not sure I understand your comment. Do you mean:
“Esto es música,” which loosely translated would be “now THAT’s music”, (meaning the speaker really enjoys the quality of the music he or she is hearing.)
“Así es la música clásica”, which loosely translated would be “such is classical music.”
I’m not sure I get what you’re asking.
You can email me privately via the contact page of this blog if you’d like to continue this discussion. Thanks!
I am so glad that I figured out how to find all your grammar posts. I love them. Very helpful. This is a topic which I find particularly tricky, so I was excited to see you are posting on it.
I think I lost you at the end.
So as you say, we use the definite article when we are referring to general concepts or categories, but as soon as we drop the article when we start to refer to things in a more specific sense, to something which a part of the general category.
Therefore, it seems to me that “Asi es la vida.” would refer to the general idea of life. And “Esto es vida.” would refer to a particular situation in life.
Thanks for your help.
oops… I meant to say: As soon as we start to refer to things in a more specific sense we drop the article….
Hi Molly,
Yes, you are right. While the translations I wrote were correct, the examples I gave were misleading, so I will update the post. As you pointed out, “Esto es vida” (This is the life), refers to a particular situation in life, while “Así es la vida,” (That’s life) refers to life in general.
There are a few exceptions to this rule but I won’t detail them here, maybe in a future blog entry. It can really get to be unnecessarily complicated once we start peeling back the layers.
However, there is one exception worth noting:
We can drop the definite articles (el, la, los, las) after prepositions and after verbs of consumption, desire or production.
For example: “Queremos paz.” (We want peace.) Not “Queremos la paz.”
“A Juan le gusta hablar de sexo.” (Juan likes talking about sex.)
Los perros comen carne. (Dogs eat meat.)
The bottomline is that for English speakers, many of us need to be aware that Spanish has this tendency to use an article where we don’t use it in English and vice versa. If we can remember the general rule of generic noun vs. specific noun, it will help us make fewer mistakes. This is something I still struggle with because at times it seems counterintuitive, at least to my English brain!
Thanks for commenting, because your comments have improved the original post!
Thanks… those additional examples help a lot! I’m not ever giong to get this right 100% of the time, but now hopefully I’ll get it right 75% of the time!