This week we would like to give you the last details you need to get a full overview of the Spanish adjective placement. Let us refresh your memory! We encourage you to go back to our first article on the topic and keep on reading this post in English or in Spanish to upgrade the way you use adjectives.

Before or after the noun?

Usually, we place adjectives that express order before the noun. These include primero (first), segundo (second), último (last), próximo (next), siguiente (following), nuevo (new), antiguo (old). For example:

Espero hacerlo mejor en el próximo examen. (I hope to do better on the next exam.)

However, when we talk about the chapters of a book, the episodes of a TV series or the floors of a building, these adjectives can also be placed after the noun. For example:

El segundo capítulo es mejor que el primero. = El capítulo segundo es mejor que el primero. (The second episode is better than the first one.)

La ropa de deporte está en la tercera planta. = La ropa de deporte está en la planta tercera. (Sports clothes are on the third floor.)

Changing form and meaning

We must consider that some adjectives change their form regarding their position before or after the noun. Grande (big), bueno (good), malo (bad), primero (first) and tercero (third) do so. Let’s have a look at how some of them vary in form:

Un chico bueno = un buen chico (A good boy)

Un consejo malo = un mal consejo (A bad piece of advice)

El capítulo primero = el primer capítulo (The first episode)

El tercer piso = el piso tercero (The third floor)

In all the cases above, adjectives keep the same meaning regardless their position in the sentence. However, the adjective grande (big) has different meanings depending on whether it goes before or after the noun:

Barcelona es una ciudad grande. (Barcelona is a big city.)

Barcelona es una gran ciudad. (Barcelona is great city.)

In the first sentence, grande describes the city’s dimensions, i. e., its size, while in the second example gran talks more about its character: a great, wonderful city. In this case, it talks about the quality of Barcelona, not about its size.

Please note that all the adjectives above change their form to agree with masculine singular nouns, but the word grande has also a different spelling for feminine singular nouns, as we have seen in the example Barcelona es una gran ciudad. The reason behind is that grande is built in the same way both for masculine and feminine nouns, so if the form changes in masculine it must also do it in feminine.

Thanks to Ignacio Sellés from our school in Alicante for bringing some extra light to the topic.

If you want to improve your knowledge about specific topics such as adjectives, we encourage you to try our don Quijote private Spanish lessons. With them, you’ll have the opportunity to focus on the topics that most interest you.

The letter "ñ" is one of the hallmarks of the Spanish language. It is present in many words and helps us distinguish them from others that are quite similar in terms of their spelling. Some of the most common examples are: caña/cana, pena/peña, cuna/cuña, campana/campana.

If you want to learn more about this beautiful letter, showing up next, you’ll discover some interesting details. You can continue reading this post in Spanish.

What is the name of the symbol over the letter “ñ” in Spanish?

The elegant headdress that lays on top of the "ñ" is called virgulilla. However, most Spanish speakers do not know this detail, so it’s very common that they refer to this spelling sign as the hat over the “ñ”, the accent mark, or even the eyebrow.

However, those who are dedicated to computer programming usually know the real name, since it turned out to be a big headache for some of them. The letter "ñ" and its virgulilla made it necessary to increase the number of bits used to represent it on the computer screens, although many times this is still a challenge to achieve.

Where does the letter “ñ” come from?

The letter "ñ" arises from the need to represent a new sound that, although did not exist in Latin, appeared in different Romance languages with the spelling of different groups of consonants, such as the double "n" (anno-“año”), the letters "gn" (lignu-“leño”), or the combination "ni" followed by vowel (Hispania-“España”).

But linguistic economy has always been very important, and since there were too many options for the same sound, medieval scribes (those who copied the books when there was no printing press) decided to simplify. Finally, the group of consonants “nn” was chosen, which was later abbreviated into a single one, and distinguished by the placement of this upper-line called virgulilla.

Later, in the thirteenth century, King Alfonso X the Wise set the first rules of Castilian language, and the "ñ" was established as the preferred spelling to reproduce the phoneme /ɲ/. Thus, its use was extended and included in the first grammar of Spanish, written by Antonio de Nebrija and published in 1492.

In the same way, other Romance languages ​​that emerged from Latin adopted other ways of representing the sound /ɲ/: Italian and French opted for the “gn” combination, Portuguese decided on “nh” and Catalan “ny”.

How many languages contain the letter “ñ”?

This is the fifteenth letter of the Spanish ABC, but it does not belong to the basic Latin alphabet. However, it is not an exclusive letter of Spanish, as it is present in many other languages ​​such as Aymara, Asturian, Breton, Bubi, Chamorro, Basque, Filipino, Galician, Guarani, Iñupiaq, Kiliwa, Mixtec, O'Dham, Otomi, Papiamento, Quechua, Rohingya, Tagalog, Crimean Tatar, Tetun, Wolofmapuche, and Zapotec.

Besides, the sound /ɲ/ can also be found in languages from every continent. Some remote examples are the Nile-Saharan and the Australian Aboriginal languages.

Equivalent Letters in Other Languages

In other languages, the double "n" has derived in different spellings:

• in Oromo, Aragonese, Venetian, Walloon, Catalan, Ewe, Gã, Ganda, Hungarian, Hmong, Indonesian, Ladino, Lingala, Malay, Quenya, Sesotho, Swahili, Walloon, Zhuang and Zulu.
• in French, Breton, Walloon, Jèrriais, Italian, Corsican, Sardinian, Genoese, Piedmontese, Lombard, Venetian, Friulan, Latin and Sicilian.
• in Occitan, Mirandés, Portuguese and Vietnamese.
• in Dutch, Croatian, Faroese, Friesian, Arumanian, Serbian, Cimbrian, Finnish and Albanian.
• <Ň> in Czech, Slovak and Roma.
• <Ń> in Polish, where, in addition, the digraph has the same value (the same happens in Basque, where apart from the <ñ>, in some dialects it is not even read as a <ñ>).
• <Ņ> in Latvian.
• (at the beginning of the word when it is palatized) in Gaelic.
• in Leonese possible solution in ñ at the beginning of the word (ñube nnube).
• and in Scottish Gaelic when pronounced palatized.
• <ɲ> in Bambara.
• in Basque (sometimes also the spelling or <ñ>).
• in gagauz before ä, e, i, ö and u.
• <に ゃ> in Japanese (hiragana), (ニ ャ, katakana) although its sound is not identical, it is borrowed for better pronunciation, since the sound <ñ> does not exist in Japanese. For example <ベ ゴ ニ ャ> translated into Spanish “Begonya ”(Begoña), as you can see it cannot be translated as is the <ñ>.
• <Нь> in Ukrainian, Russian and Bulgarian.
• <њ> in Serbian.
• <ஞ்> in Tamil.
• <νι> in Greek.
• <ኝ> in ge'ez, amharic, tigriña, tigré, harari, blin and me'en, among other languages ​​that use the Ethiopian writing system.
• <ञ> in Hindi, Marathi, among other languages ​​that use Devanagari.

Some Words Written with <Ñ>

Here are some of the most used examples of words that are written with the letter <ñ>. Among the words with positive connotations, we find: soñar (dream), retoño (tot, sprout), aliñar (dress, season), buñuelo (fritter, profiterole), compañero (partner), hazaña (feat), cariño (love), enseñar (teach) o entrañable (endearing). On the other hand, we also use the language to describe unpleasant situations. In this way, we find: daño (damage), ponzoña (poison), puñal (dagger), arañar (scratch), niñato (immature person), ñoño (cheesy, tacky), engaño (trickery, lie), migraña (migraine), añoranza (nostalgia, longing), huraño (shy, hermit-like) o carroña (carrion).

And now, tell us ... what is your favorite word written with <ñ>?

In our last few academic posts, we studied how to spot the difference between masculine and feminine nouns and adjectives. That probably wasn’t completely new to you, but today we’re going to cover a topic that students are always asking about. It usually doesn’t get the attention it deserves in the classroom.

Now that we know when an adjective is masculine or feminine, where do we put it? There’s no easy answer because in Spanish, adjectives can go before or after the noun.

Read this post in Spanish.

Some adjectives always go after the noun. These adjectives express:

• Color: ¿Te gusta mi vestido azul? (Do you like my blue dress?)
• Form: Me he comprado una mesa redonda. (I bought myself a round table.)
• State or condition: En esta casa hay muchas cosas rotas. (In this house there are many broken things.)
• Type: Quiero un teléfono móvil. (I want a mobile phone.)
• Origin: Me gusta la música española. (I like Spanish music.)

However, there’s an exception: in poetic language, these types of adjectives can go before the noun.

• Me enamoré de sus rojos labios (I fell in love with his/her red lips).

All other adjectives (the ones that don’t fit into the categories listed above) can be placed before or after the noun, depending on the situation.

• When a Spanish adjective comes after the noun, it is usually being used to distinguish the thing we’re talking about from something else.
  •  Vamos por el camino grande. Parece más seguro que el camino pequeño.

(Let’s take the big road. It looks safer than the small road.)

• When a Spanish adjective comes before the noun, it’s not being used to distinguish the noun from other nouns. Instead, the adjective is being used to highlight a quality of the noun.
  •  El pequeño camino que lleva a la cima de la montaña es peligroso.

(The small road that leads to the top of the mountain is dangerous.)

In this case, there is only one road. The adjective pequeño is being used to describe a characteristic of the road. We don’t need to distinguish between a big road and a small road because there is only one.

These adjectives that can be used before the noun usually describe a characteristic whose meaning is relative. That is to say, the characteristic they describe depends on making a comparison. For example, grande-pequeño (big-small), rápido-lento (fast-slow), bonito-feo (pretty-ugly), fuerte-débil (strong-weak), largo-corto (long-short), cercano-lejano (near-far), etc. Something is big or small, pretty or ugly, fast or slow, etc., depending on what we compare it to.

Usually, you will see these adjectives with relative meanings placed before a noun in formal writing. For example, Los testigos dicen que se asustaron porque escucharon una fuerte explosión (The witnesses say they were frightened because they heard a loud explosión).

To learn more, sign up for one of the Spanish courses we offer at our schools.

Thanks to Ignacio Sellés from our school in Alicante for teaching us where to put our Spanish adjectives.

English has become the de facto global language — just look at international airport signs, press releases, the media, and the internet. However, every language has its limits, including English. So much so that some Spanish speakers might say that this Germanic language is missing some words.

Beyond just a means of communication, each language is also a way of interpreting reality, which explains why there are lots of cultural concepts that have a name in some languages but not in others. In today’s article we’ll show you 5 Spanish words with no English equivalent. Click here if you want to read this entire article in Spanish.

1. Estrenar

Estrenar is a verb that means to use something for the first time. Sounds super useful, right? You can estrenar your new jeans, estrenar a new notebook, etc. In this case, contrary to what usually happens, we have to use a whole phrase in English to communicate what Spanish manages to say in a single word. Here’s an example:

Ayer estrené unos zapatos nuevos

Yesterday I wore my new shoes for the first time

2. Sobremesa

La sobremesa is the time people spend sitting together chatting or having a drink after a meal. This word is cultural in nature. It’s not so much that English is missing a term, but rather that the concept of sobremesa isn’t as present in English-speaking countries, and therefore not enough people have felt the need to have a name for it.

In Mediterranean cultures, including Spanish, the shared moment after a meal can go on for hours and hours. However, in other European countries this practice is not as common.

Another cultural word is siesta. Spanish has a word for this custom because it’s something that Spanish people do. But if there was a country where nobody took naps, would they have a name for it?

3. Tocayo

This one is a bit harder to explain. A tocayo or tocaya is someone who has the same name as another person. For example, the Spiderman actor James Franco and the famous soul singer James Brown are tocayos.

Fun fact! The word tocayo comes from Náhuatl. In this indigenous language from Mexico, tocaitl means name, honor, or fame.

4. Entrecejo

Let’s be honest: What would the iconic image of Frida Kahlo be without her entrecejo? As the name indicates (entre meaning “between” and ceja meaning “eyebrow”), the entrecejo is the space between one eyebrow and the other. For some people, this area is just a few centimeters of bare skin, while in others, like the famous Mexican artist, it’s covered in hair, forming the middle third of a unibrow.

5. Madrugar

Today’s last word is the most useful of all: madrugar. You can save a lot of time saying “wake up early” with just one word. Madrugar is such a commonly used word in Spanish that it comes with its own saying:

A quien madruga, Dios le ayuda

(God helps those who get up early)

Our equivalent phrase in English is “The early bird catches the worm.”

There you have the 5 Spanish words we think should exist in English. If you liked this article, share it in video form with your friends and start using these words! Remember, new terms can be accepted into the English dictionary if people start using them in everyday life, so hop to it!