whats the difference between: ¿cuántas? and ¿cuántos?
what is the difference in the a and o
4 Answers
Although I don't know if ocupado qualifies as an adjective,
Yes, the past participle can be used as an adjective.
Estoy ocupado/a ocupado/a is a [predicate] adjective.
The difference is between what the adjective "cuánto" is modifying.
Adjectives must take on both the amount (plural or singular) and the gender (female or male) constructions as the noun they modify.
If the noun an adjective modifies is masculine, like los años, then the adjective must also be musculine.
Cuántos años tienes? How old are you? (literally "how many years you have?")
If the noun it modifies is feminine, like las horas, then the adjective must be feminine as well.
Cuántas horas trabajaste ayer? How many hours did you work yesterday?
Also note that the adjective must be masculine or feminine based on the person you are referring to as well. Think back to lesson two on this site. They give examples of how this works. "Estoy ocupado" and "Estoy ocupada" are only different in that one speaker is a male and the other is a female. Although I don't know if ocupado qualifies as an adjective, I believe it is derived from the past participle of ocupar. Describing another person takes the same form "Está ocupada" She is busy.
However, be careful, some words are feminine but take on masculine articles (The definite articles are el, la, las, los), for example "el agua" is feminine, but because the "a" in the word agua would make "la agua" sound funny (or even make it sound like lagua) we change the article to el, except when in plural form because the s negates the funniness. Las aguas doesn't run in the same problem of la agua. In this case the adjective still takes on the gender of the noun, so you have to know these genders by heart. Although some nouns that have odd articles have tricks to remembering them, these tricks aren't coming to mind for me at the moment.
I believe that you would use "cuántas" to modify a group of female only nouns, asking "how many?"
Cuántos would be the form to use for masculine plural....or a group of mixed masculine and feminine things. For example, in a public school you could ask "¿Cuántos niños?" and mean how many girls and boys. But if you wanted to know just the count of girls, you could say "¿Cuántas niñas?"
masculine plural feminine plural
Because when used as adjectives the must show concordance with the noun that they modify.
¿Cuántos libros.....?
¿Cuántas manzanas..?
