Love-Spanish.com: Where Are Your Parents From?

Thursday 30 January 2014

Where Are Your Parents From?

Introduction

This post is about the use of describing words/ adjectives in general, and more specifically about the use of masculine/ plural form of a describing word/ adjective.

SCENARIO

Imagine you talking about family/relatives to someone who doesn't know your parents. At some point the other person asks you: "where are your parents from?".

In Spanish, the other person could choose to be less formal and ask you:

¿De dónde son tus padres^*?

Alternatively, he/ she could choose to be a little bit more formal and say:

¿De dónde son sus padres^*?

*NB The Spanish word padres (masculine/ plural) may also mean fathers.

OUR TIP

This is a straightforward question about your parents. If your answer does not include a reference to the person asking the question, you DO NOT need be concerned about the degree of formality in the original question. You can just concentrate on answering the question.

Questions like this one are usually answered by indicating:

The nationality of your parents
The country your parents come from
The city/ town your parents come from

Here are some sample replies:

Mis padres son ingleses* (my parents are English).
Mis padres son italianos* (my parents are Italian).
Mis padres son estadounidenses* (my parents are American).
Mis padres son vietnamitas* (my parents are Vietnamese).
Mis padres son de Inglaterra (my parents are from England).
Mis padres son de Londres (my parents are from London).
Mis padres son ingleses*, de Londres (my parents are English, they are from London).

Now you should practise answering the question:

¿De dónde son tus padres?

*NB See Grammar below

*Grammar-Adjectives

	Gender	Number	Adjective
padre	masculine	singular	inglés
padres	masculine/ mixed	plural	ingleses
madre	feminine	singular	inglesa
madres	feminine	plural	inglesas

Noun-Adjective Agreement

See notes below on Noun-Adjective agreement

Noun-Adjective Agreement

As you can see above, in Spanish you can also use a describing word/ adjective to indicate where someone comes from. Below follow some notes on how to choose the correct form of the adjective for a given noun.

Adjectives -Gender

When you use Spanish describing words/ adjectives, you need to bear in mind that for each describing word in English, there are often two related but different describing words/ adjectives in Spanish. The reason being that Spanish describing words/ adjectives have to 'agree' with the gender (masculine or feminine) of the noun they describe. Most Spanish describing words have similar but separate words for each of the two genders (for example, americano/ americana). A few, however have one single form (for example, canadiense).

Thus when you come to use a describing word to indicate where someone comes from, you need to check whether the corresponding Spanish describing word/ adjective has:

One single form (for example , estadounidense)
Two separate forms (for example, inglés/ inglesa).- If the describing word/ adjective has two separate forms, then you need to choose the form which matches the gender (masculine/ feminine) of the noun it describes.

Adjectives -Number

When you use Spanish describing words/ adjectives, you also need to bear in mind that Spanish describing words/ adjectives have singular and plural* forms the same as nouns. A Spanish describing word/ adjective must also to 'agree' with the number (singular/ plural) of the noun it describes. For example, padre inglés (English father) or padres ingleses (English parents/ fathers).

Thus when you come to use a describing word/ adjective to indicate where someone comes from, you need to choose the form of the Spanish describing word/ adjective which matches the noun's number (singular/ plural).

*NB View posts with details about the plural of Spanish words here.

Adjectives -Use

All the practical examples in this post refer to parents (plural), padres. Consequently, they require the masculine/ plural form of a describing word/ adjective, for example, ingleses.

Spelling

Please note that in Spanish, the names of countries, towns, cities, etc. (for example, “Inglaterra” or “Londres”) are capitalised. However, the nationality describing words/ adjectives (for example “italiana”) are not.

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