Platiquemos Unit 7.21.2 – The Spanish Demonstratives

Demonstrative Adjectives

Demonstrative Adjectives are a special kind of ‘limiting’ adjective that modifies the nouns location in time or space:

I liked those things we had yesterday.

I liked those things over there.

The English demonstratives are unusual in that there are different words for the single and plural form of the modifier as is common in Spanish:

this & these

that & those

In English there are two modifiers; one for near items, this and another for far items, that. Spanish has three modifiers, one set for items near the speaker, este, a second for items near the listener, ese, and a third for items not near either the speaker or listener, aquel (maybe equivalent to the English yonder?). These distinctions plus the three distinct gender forms gives Spanish 15 forms of the modifier compared to the 4 in English.

It is interesting that the singular ‘neuter’ form uses the -o ending that usually marks an adjective as ‘male’.

Demonstrative Pronouns

Whereas the demonstrative adjectives above modify a noun by identifying which ‘thing’ you are talking about, demonstrative pronouns replace the noun altogether just like any other pronoun. In this form the Spanish demonstrative always takes an accent on the penultimate (2nd to last) syllable. This accent does not change the pronunciation since this is also the syllable that would naturally be accented but are used merely to distinguish adjectives and pronouns. (Such accents are known as orthographic accents.)

These books are cheaper than those.

Estos libros son mas baratos que ésos.

In English the singular form in not readily used as a pronoun so ‘one’ is added to replace the noun but is not needed in Spanish.

This book is cheaper than that one.

Este libro es mas barato que ése.

In Spanish the neuter form is almost always used as a pronoun since there are no neuter nouns for it to modify.

Qué es éso?