Today we will cover the topic of how to use Spanish nouns as adjectives. An email that a customer recently sent to me helps illustrate the point that I wish to make in this lesson and demonstrate how to use who Spanish nouns as adjectives. A customer wrote me and said:
Hola Patrick
I think you may have an error in your last email because you wrote:
1. Lagañoso - Alguien que tiene lagañas (some one who has sleep in their eyes). That is, "sleep" as in "the dried particles often found in the corners of the eyes after sleeping.
Lagaña - secretions from the eyes
(In some Spanish speaking countries they use the word "legaña" instead of "lagaña.")"
Patrick, as example of how to use the word "lagañoso" in Spanish, you then wrote the following sentence:
Le dije al doctor "mis ojos están muy lagañosos."
I told the doctor "my eyes have a lot sleep in them."
Patrick, in the definition that you used for "lagañoso" you suggested that it was a noun. But in the sentence where you gave an example with "lagañoso" you used it as an adjective.
So which one is it Patrick? A noun? Or an adjective? Surely it cannot be both.
That was the email that a customer sent to me.
A strange as it may sound the word "lagañoso" is actually both a noun and an adjective. In fact, many Spanish words are both nouns and adjectives. This is something that I have never seen covered in any of the learning-Spanish grammar books that I used to learn the language. This is actually something that
I discovered on my own from years of conversing in Spanish with native Spanish speakers.
Unlike in English, in Spanish very often you can use the exact same word as a noun and an adjective to refer to a person. We are not able to do this in English.
For example, in English you can call someone a "liar" but you cannot take that noun "liar" and then use the exact same word as an adjective and say that someone is "very liar." It would not make sense in English. You would have to use the adjective "lying." But the Spanish language allows you to use the same Spanish word both as a noun and adjective to refer to a person.
Here's another example...
In English you can call someone a "dummy" but you cannot take that same noun (dummy) and then use the exact same word as an adjective and say that someone is "very dummy." It would not make sense in English. You would have to use the adjective "dumb." But the Spanish language allows you to use the exact same Spanish word both as a noun and adjective to refer to a person in this case.
And, in English you can describe someone as "dirty" but you cannot take that same adjective (dirty) and then say that same person is "a dirty."
It would not make sense in English. But the Spanish language, in this case, would allow you to use the same Spanish word both as a noun and adjective to refer to a person.
Pat Jackson is the Founder of Learning Spanish Like Crazy - the only learning Spanish method that teaches real authentic everyday conversational Latin American Spanish. Pat presently lives in Medellín, Colombia - the City of Eternal Spring. If you would like to get FREE Instant access to the first 2 MP3 auido lessons of Learning Spanish Like Crazy and get FREE instant access to 10 learning Spanish videos from one of our BEAUTIFUL native-Spanish speaking Latina instructors, then go here now: Learn Spanish That's http://www.LearningSpanishLikeCrazy.com/
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