A funny quirk of English I never noticed until I started learning Spanish:
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
The problem is that you are mixing two different constructs, if you are refering to the whole thing you have to say un/una, if you are describing a property of something you don't use it.
Es un perro, es macho. (It's a dog, is male)
If you are talking about doctor being a property of someone,like his profession, you say "es médico" but if you are refering to the doctor as an entity and not a property of someone you have to use "a":
Es un médico muy famoso (He is a very famous doctor). "Es médico muy famoso" again makes no sense.
A good parallel in English is actually “going to (or being at) school.” While you can say you’re at “the” school or “a school”, they mean different things than just being at school. Ditto for UK “to hospital.” (Cf. to university, to college, to city hall, in government)
Notably these are not the norm in English, but they do illustrate the pattern.
hbn · · focus · HN ↗
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
soyyo · · focus · HN ↗
Es un perro (its a dog)
Saying "es perro" makes no sense.
The problem is that you are mixing two different constructs, if you are refering to the whole thing you have to say un/una, if you are describing a property of something you don't use it.
Es un perro, es macho. (It's a dog, is male)
If you are talking about doctor being a property of someone,like his profession, you say "es médico" but if you are refering to the doctor as an entity and not a property of someone you have to use "a":
Es un médico muy famoso (He is a very famous doctor). "Es médico muy famoso" again makes no sense.
alpinisme · · focus · HN ↗
Notably these are not the norm in English, but they do illustrate the pattern.