language help: I’m learning Spanish, but why do the words have “la” or “el” in front of them? - Help.com

means the.

Denotes masculine words or feminine ones.

Commander Ikari wrote:
means the.

Denotes masculine words or feminine ones.

he’s right

In context you wouldn’t say, “Look at skirt,” you say, “Look at the skirt,” el or la being ‘the’. Ikari has it right too.

Commander Ikari wrote:
means the.

Denotes masculine words or feminine ones.

tay_br wrote:
so whats the difference between “la” and “el?” how come they apply to different words?

Already answered. El is masculine, la is feminine.

the only sentence i know is La Cucaracha or maybe its El Cucaracha

Barbyman wrote:
the only sentence i know is La Cucaracha or maybe its El Cucaracha

It’s “La”

La Cucaracha of course i knew that ,a very famous Song from yester year..

In many languages, nouns are assigned a “gender.” In Spanish, there are two genders, masculine and feminine and EVERY noun is one of the two. A table is feminine, a dog is masculine. There are suffixes to feminize a masculine noun (so you can say “lady doctor”, for example), but most Western European languages have at least two genders (some have three or four).

With each noun you come across, you have to memorize its gender, along with the word itself. That way, when you add adjectives to it, you know which endings to add. Hence, the addition of an article to a noun. So, you don’t memorize muchacho, but el muchacho. So, you don’t say something like “Yo estoy americano alta.”

English is peculiar because, for the most part, inamimate objects have no grammatical gender. There isn’t a separate “the” for masculine and feminine nouns. It’s just “the.” Sometimes, inanimate objects like ships and aircraft are referred to as she, as well as countries, but if you’re a native speaker of English and Spanish is your first foreign languages, chances are you’ve never heard of grammatical gender.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammati…

Good luck and remember, memorize the article with the noun and you will goof up far less. Besides, the article is also there to help you when the end of the noun misleads you as to its actual gender (la mano, for example).

When you get to verbs, you’ll have to memorize a few little pieces as well, to prevent you from forgetting irregulars. It just takes a few flashcards and you’ll have it. It’s frustrating, but at some point in the near future, your frustration will stop if you work hard enough and you’ll just get it.