3 Comments
- 19
OK, I don't get this.
This one makes sense to me. A car has no gender, so it's "eso". Bit earlier we had an example using "hospital" and "eso" was NOT used: "Ese edificio blanco es un hospital."
Why????
- 23
- 4
- 4
I didn't know either, but apparently, "eso" is used by itself, as in "This is a car," whereas "ese" is more like an adjective, used before a noun as in "This white building."
I think it's because when it's an adjectiv (like in "Ese edificio") there is no neutral form, only ese/esa/esos/esas.
I would say (but I'm not native english speaker) that you could see the difference as: - "This [pronoun for car] is a car" -> "Ése es un coche". Because this stand for a masculine word. - "This [pronoun for an indeterminate thing] is a car" -> "Eso es un coche".
NB : When it's a pronoun, you can find it with an accent mark on the first "e" : ése/ésa/ésos/ésas (at least up to 2010, after the RAE made some change and you should - at least in Spain - put an accent mark but many still do it). And, as a neutral pronoun, "eso" (never with an accent mark) exists only at singular.