The plural in Spanish is very similar to the plural in English. In general terms, we simply add an “s” to the word we want to pluralize. Nevertheless, there are some irregular plurals that follow a different pattern. We’ve divided plural forms in Spanish into 5 simple rules that are easy to follow.

Remember: in the plural, articles, both definite (“el” and “la”) and indefinite (“un” and “una”) change to their plural form (“los”, “las”, “unos”, “unas”) and have to agree with the gender (masculine or feminine) of the noun:

Adjectives must also agree with the noun in both gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular or plural):

*When we’re talking about a mixed group or two or more people, things or places of different genders we use the masculine plural:

Rules for the Formation of Plural Nouns in Spanish

1. If the noun ends in a vowel (a, e, i, o, u) we add an -s

Note: Nouns ending in -í have two possible plurals: -es or -s:

2. If the noun ends in a consonant we add “es”

*When a noun ends in -ión and we add -es to pluralize it we drop the accent mark:

3. If the noun ends in -z we add -es and change the “z” to “c”

4. Some words are always in the plural form (similar to English) and don’t have a singular form

5. Some words which end in an “s” remain the same in both the singular and the plural. Only the articles change from singular to plural

Note: the article + a day of the week usually means “on” the day of the week.  For example, “Yo trabajo el lunes”  (I work on Monday). 

Get ready to prove your knowledge on plural forms of nouns in Spanish – take the plural forms test below!

In this lesson, you’ve seen the five main rules on how to make plural forms of nouns in Spanish.  We also included a brief reminder about what this means for definite and indefinite articles in Spanish, as well as adjectives, at the beginning of the lesson.  If you haven’t seen our posts on these two topics, Definite and Indefinite Articles, and Adjectives in Spanish then take a look at those topics now.