In this lesson, we will learn about one of the major grammatical concepts that makes Spanish different from English -- noun gender. In Spanish, all nouns can be classified as either masculine or feminine. We will also talk about the Spanish indefinite articles for translating "a" and "an". Finally, we will learn a few basic nouns to get us started.

Vocabulary:

hombre - man mujer - woman chico - boy chica - girl flor - flower coche - car rosa - rose writing desk - pupitre residencia - dormitory novia - girlfriend or fiancée [SLIDE 1] Welcome to SpanishHour lesson 1. In this lesson, we'll talk about articles and gender of nouns. In English, articles refer to a, an, and the. We'll start by looking at a and an, which are called the indefinite articles. In Spanish, there are four indefinite articles. In other words, if you see a or an in English, it'll translate into one of four possibilities. un, una, unos, or unas There are four articles in Spanish because the article has to match the noun it comes before in gender and in number. Now obviously, number refers to singular or plural, but what is gender? Well in Spanish, all nouns have a gender--they're either masculine or they're feminine. Let's take a look at some examples: man is hombre in spanish and it's a masculine noun woman is mujer in spanish and it's a feminine noun flower is flor; it's another feminine noun car is coche; and that is a masculine noun Later we'll look at how to identify whether a noun is masculine or feminine. For now, let's go back to the four indefinite articles. We have un, which is masculine singular. una which is feminine singular. Unos which is masculine plural. Unas, which is feminine plural. So, let's see how we would say a man, a woman, some men, and some women. A man is singular and that's masculine, so we would use 'un'. 'un hombre'. A woman; that's singular but now it's feminine, so we use 'una mujer' Some men is masculine plural; so that calls for unos hombres. Some women, plural feminine; that calls for 'unas mujeres'. So to sum it up; un hombre, singular masculine; una mujer, singular feminine; unos hombres, plural masculine; unas mujeres, plural feminine. We've just covered all the uses of a and an, which are the indefinite articles. Let's move on to the.