About the gender of numbers in spanish.

Question

¡Hola! I'm new for this wonderful website and also new for spanish. Because my native language have no gender for each word, so I'm really curious about the gender of the number in spanish in the lesson 1.8 of Learn Spanish 1.

In this lesson is about how to tell the time by using "Son las + hour + y + minute. so I wonder that

1. Is each number in spanish feminine, because they use "las" (pl. of la). And if it is, why those numbers, mostly, don't end with "a"

2. If it's one o'clock, we should change "Son las...." to be singular "Es la....." and change the word "uno" to be "una" and why don't we change other numbers? such as Son las cinco > Son las cincas ....somthing like this????

This question might be considered easy but for me, who isn't used to the words' gender. It's really confusing. Thanks for the kindness.

Answer 1

The feminine la/las is used because it refers to hora(s), not because of the gender of the numbers.

Son las cinco [horas] de la tarde.

The word horas is implied, but not written/spoken with time expressions.

And if it is, why those numbers, mostly, don't end with "a"

Don't assume that every feminine adjective ends in "a".

Spanish number gender

See this article discussing the gender of numbers as adjectives.

Following are the basic Spanish numbers and patterns in which they are formed. Those that are in italics are forms that change according to gender, while the non-italic forms are fixed. ....

Gracias!! ^____^ - Darika, Jan 30, 2011

Answer 2

Hi, Darika and welcome to the forum. Here is a link to a number translator that may help you.That page above is very useful. This link to the number translator may help you, too. Link to number translatorlink text

Gracias!! ^____^ - Darika, Jan 30, 2011