Spanish Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, teachers, students and Spanish language enthusiasts in general wanting to discuss the finer points of the language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I want to ask a question about a preceding article before a noun.
I was reading the following sentence
La casa no era muy enorme, pero tenía unas habitaciones enormes
which I roughly translated to
The house wasn't very big, but it had big rooms.
I was confused however, with the use of 'unas'.
Couldn't we say
La casa no era muy enorme, pero tenía habitaciones enormes
without the definite article, or does the 'unas' signify some kind of relationship between 'casa' and 'habitaciones'?
Some big rooms vs The big rooms
When you use an indefinite article, the noun has no definite quantity. If you do not use an article at all, then the noun is just that, a lonely noun.
Example:
Puedo tener unas galletas
This indicates that you only want to have some of the cookies, not all of them.
Puedo tener galletas
This simply indicates that you want cookies, but there is no definite quantity. It's very generic and to-the-point.
Puedo tener las galletas
This indicates that you want all of the cookies, even without saying "all of the". It's equivalent to the phrase "pass the butter". You want the butter, not some butter.
