Essential lesson 2: when to use indefinite article?
  • wolfkouji January 14
    Hi everyone, I just started learning Spanish, and I am on lesson 2 in the first book.
    An example sentence is: Él es abogado. (He is a lawyer). I do not understand why it is not "Él es un abogado"? Especially earlier in the book there is another sentence "Es una familia", and the article is used.
    Similarly, why is the first article used in the sentence "La señora Martínez es la madre"? So what is the rule for article usage when talking about persons?
    Thank you very much! Gracias!

  • Christopher January 15
    Great question! I'm not a native speaker, so I'll let Anna or one of the other eTutors give you the definitive answer. But in Romance languages, and even other languages with articles, you usually don't use the article with professions. So:

    Él es abogado. (He's a lawyer.)
    But
    Él es un hombre. (He's a man.)
  • Anna January 15
    Hello wolfkouji!

    There are two kinds of articles, definite articles (el, la, los, las) and indefinite articles (un, una, unos, unas).

    As Chris mentioned, to explain our profession we will not use any articles:

    - Yo soy profesora.
    - Tú eres estudiante de Español.
    - Juan es abogado.

    Unless we want to be very specific about our role and explain exactly who are we.
    Yo soy la abogada de Juan. (Lit. I am the lawyer of Juan) -  I am Juan's Lawyer.

    The definite articles "el, la, los, las" is the equivalent of "the" in English. We will use definite article in the sentence "La señora Martínes es la madre" (La señora Martínez is the mother) if we are being specific in this context. The use of una/la depends on the context.

    - La señora Martínes es la madre - She is the mother (she is the one in this family).
    - La señora Martínez es una madre - She is a mother (she is one of the several mothers in the school)

    Other examples:

    - Yo soy la esposa de Juan (Lit. I am the wife of Juan) I am Juan's wife (I am the one!)
    - Yo soy una esposa de Juan (Lit. I am a wife of Juan)  
    We will not be able to use yo soy una esposa de Juan, unless Juan has more than one wife and I am one of the several wives.

    Let's see more examples:

    - Yo soy una persona (I am a person) (in general)
    - Yo soy la persona que buscas - I am the person you are looking for (specific)

    - Tú eres el hombre de la casa (You are the man of the house) You are the one in the house.
    - Tú eres un hombre honesto (You are an honest man) You are one of many.
  • Anna January 15
    Let's practice with more examples using articles when talking about persons:

    A) Tengo ___ madre  (la/una).   I have a mother
    B) Yo soy ___ madre de Pedro. (la/una)    I am Pedro's mother
    C) ___ hijo de María se llama Pedro. (el/un)    Maria's son is called Pedro
    D) María tiene __ hijo (el/un)  Maria has a son

    Let me know the answers and I will review them for you!
  • wolfkouji January 17
    Thank you very much for your help! Now I understand that articles are not used when describing a person's occupation. However for the second question, I was asking why the "la" is used in "
    "La señora Martínez ". Since articles are never used when a person is named in English, I hope to know what the case is in Spanish.
    For the practices:
    A) Tengo una madre  (la/una).   I have a mother
    B) Yo soy la madre de Pedro. (la/una)    I am Pedro's mother
    C) El hijo de María se llama Pedro. (el/un)    Maria's son is called Pedro
    D) María tiene un hijo (el/un)  Maria has a son
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