Gender for first in a group

Michael M.C1Kwiziq community member

Gender for first in a group

In this sentence from the exercise: "Él es muy famoso, expone en muchas galerías y museos y tiene muchos premios."

The word "muchas" is feminine, but since it seems to include "museos" I was thinking it might be "muchos". Is it a rule that the first in a series determines the gender, or was this done to say "many galleries and (some) museums"?

Asked 3 years ago
InmaNative Spanish expert teacher in KwiziqCorrect answer

Hola Michael

Good question!! 

There's a lot to learn about "concordancia" (agreement) in Spanish grammar. In this case, the rule says that when you have a determiner (e.g adjectives like muchos/muchas, or articles like el/la...) in front of two nouns, it needs to agree with the noun that is closer to the determiner. This is why here we used "muchas galerías y museos". 

If you decide to include the determiner in front of each noun then of course you need the masculine form for museos:

"muchas galerías y muchos museos".

I hope this clarifies it.

Un saludo

Inma

Michael M. asked:

Gender for first in a group

In this sentence from the exercise: "Él es muy famoso, expone en muchas galerías y museos y tiene muchos premios."

The word "muchas" is feminine, but since it seems to include "museos" I was thinking it might be "muchos". Is it a rule that the first in a series determines the gender, or was this done to say "many galleries and (some) museums"?

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