NEUTRAL articles in Spanish: the LO and its USES

At the time of writing or speaking we can meet different types of articles. Among them we can find the masculine or feminine ones that will always agree with a noun of the same gender. For its part, the neuter article will never accompany a noun. In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to see what the neutral articles in Spanish.

Articles are words that are part of the sentence and that accompany a name to center and distinguish the word. In other words, the article determines an object, person or concept from the whole set.

These items can be of different types. Among them we are going to focus on neutral items. First of all, it should be noted that in Spanish we can find more neutral determinants than in other languages ​​that come from the same family. Thus, we can find different neutral determinants such as:

• It
• It
• The

These are all the neutral determinants that we have in Spanish. Of them, only it it is a neutral item. For its part, this is a pronoun that has an unstressed pronominal form (it).

In many cases there are problems when it comes to distinguishing the pronoun lo from the same neuter article. So much so that scholars still present some doubts in which two currents are established. The first indicates that it is an article and for others it would be a pronoun. In this case we have decided to explain what is as a neutral article.

If we consider it as an article, we can say that on many occasions it is used for create other words and turn them into nouns. Therefore, it can accompany adjectives, adverbial or prepositional constructions.

On the other hand, the definite article it can also be confused with the accusative of the third person pronoun it, which in this case is written the same in masculine as in neuter. In this case, we must point out that the pronoun it always accompanies a verb, but the neuter article will always be prepended to an adjective, a possessive pronoun, an adjective, relative sentences and the preposition of.

The neutral article it It will only be shown with words that are not verbs, that is, forming part of a noun phrase, although it will never accompany a noun. When this appears related to a verb, it will always be an unstressed neuter pronoun that always functions as a direct object and is part of the noun predicate. Therefore, the neutral form of the article can only be accompanied by:

• Adjectives: in this case, the adjective, when accompanied by a neuter pronoun, can always be in masculine. Let's see an example to understand it. The good thing about this situation is that it allows us to realize who was by our side from the beginning.
• Possessive determiners: My thing is music.
• Ordinal determinants: The first thing is to know who is behind the whole thing.
• Some undefined determinants (one, another, enough and others): I did not tell him one or the other.
• Relative: She was unable to return home, which caused her great financial loss.
• Prepositional phrase: When we entered the restaurant I asked for a special plant, but Antonio ordered the usual.
• Participle: I don't know how we are going to explain to the shareholders' meeting what happened yesterday.

So we can say that although it is an article, it will never be accompanied by a name. This is because it is a neutral article, that is, they have neither gender nor number, something that is necessary when making any construction using a noun. In other words, a noun will always have to agree in gender and number with an article, a situation that does not occur when the neuter article lo appears.

Next, although we have already seen some examples in the previous sections, we are going to see a series of phrases that can help you distinguish them.

• It The bad thing is that there was nothing left when we got to eat.
• tell me it What do you really think about the case at hand?
• It The only thing I ask of you is that you be by my side right now.
• It Best of all was when the hotel told us that they would put us in a suite.
• She told me that she was in Cáceres, it Which made me suspicious since he had not visited his homeland for many years.
• She was tired of it being it As always, he already wanted to change.
• You already are it old enough to know it which is right or wrong.
• It his is to be all day doing cute things so that we forgive him when he does something wrong

We hope this lesson on what are neutral items has helped you. If you want to continue learning, do not hesitate to visit our sections of Spanish language.