Questions & Answers about El brote es muy pequeño.
Why is it el brote and not la brote?
Because brote is a masculine noun in Spanish, so it takes the masculine singular article el.
A few useful points:
- el = masculine singular the
- la = feminine singular the
- The ending -e does not automatically tell you the gender, so brote just has to be learned as masculine.
If the noun were feminine, you would use la instead.
Why does the sentence use es and not está?
Spanish usually uses ser for more general or defining characteristics, and estar for states, conditions, or locations.
Here, small is being treated as a characteristic of the sprout, so es pequeño is the normal choice.
- es pequeño = it is small
- está would sound wrong here in normal usage for size
As a general rule, physical size is usually expressed with ser:
- La casa es grande.
- El perro es pequeño.
Why is there no subject pronoun, like él?