Gender of comparative adjective

Question

For instance, "La sala es más espacios(-o,-a) que el baño."

Which gender should be used if the two nouns disagree in gender?

I think it's the male. - rac1, Apr 2, 2017

Espaciosa, not espacia. - jtaniel, Apr 2, 2017

@jtaniel The way I wrote it, it's "espacios-" with either ending. - LiuBang10, Apr 2, 2017

Answer 1

La sala es más espaciosa que el baño.

El cuarto es más espacioso que la cocina.

El niño es más alto que la niña.

La niña es más alta que el niño.

La mesa es más linda que el armario.

El armario es más lindo que la mesa.

The adjective agrees with the first noun.

Muchísimas gracias. - LiuBang10, Apr 2, 2017

De nada. - Polenta, Apr 2, 2017

Answer 2

Interesting question. I think that it should agree with the gender of the first item mentioned, because that is the item that you are actually describing. Grammatically speaking, I think the phrase is functioning as an adjective referring to La sala.

I will continue searching for a definitive answer until a native speaker can either confirm or contradict the above.

I found the following example on lengalia.com, which is an excellent Spanish course written by Spaniards. It confirms my thinking above.

Una bicicleta | un diccionario (divertida, +) ? Una bicicleta es más divertida que un diccionario.

Polenta is a native Speaker, and I concur with her, completely. - Daniela2041, Apr 3, 2017