The use of "de"?
El hombre lleva un chaleco de cuero.
The man is wearing a leather vest.
If the above sentence is one way of writing the translation; can a second way be:
"El hombre lleva un chaleco cuero" without the "de"?
If the "de" is needed, is it because it's a noun describing a noun? Gracias
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4 Answers
In spanish, nouns aren't used as adjectives as they are in English. So that would be the reson for the de in this case.
I also think the translation would be something more like
The man wears a leather vest.
El hombre está llevando un chaleco de cuero.
Would be my guess on your translation.
Ramuh321 is right: in Spanish nouns can rarely be used as adjectives, so noun + noun must be linked with "de" 99.9% of the time.
No, the second example doesn't work. In that structure, "cuero" is an adjective, which Spanish doesn't allow. It's ok for us in English, but if you want to express what something is made of, you need to use "de".
Llevo un chaleco de cuero.
Here's an adjective without "de":
Llevo un chaleco negro de cuero.
Edit: This could be possible if there were an adjective form of leather in Spanish. Cuero is the word for the substance, but I'm not sure if there's a way to say "of leather" in a single word.
de usually means what kind it is, such as perro de chihuahua
