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Learn Hardcore Spanish (Spain): La canción es alegre. - The song is cheerful.

Hardcore Spanish (Spain)
/Having a karaoke night with friends
/La canción es alegre.

La canción es alegre.

Word

La canción es alegre.

Meaning

The song is cheerful.

Part of speech

sentence

Pronunciation

Course

Hardcore Spanish (Spain)

Lesson

Having a karaoke night with friends

Breakdown of La canción es alegre.

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Questions & Answers about La canción es alegre.

Why does the sentence start with la?

La is the feminine singular definite article, meaning the.

You use la because canción is a feminine singular noun:

la canción = the song

In Spanish, nouns have grammatical gender, so the article has to match the noun.

How do I know that canción is feminine?

You usually learn the gender together with the noun: la canción, not just canción.

While many nouns ending in -o are masculine and many ending in -a are feminine, canción is one of the many feminine nouns ending in -ión. A lot of nouns with this ending are feminine:

la canción
la televisión
la conversación

So it is best to memorise it as la canción.

Why is it es and not está?

Spanish has two main verbs meaning to be: ser and estar.

Here, es is used because alegre describes a general characteristic or quality of the song. It tells us what the song is like.

es alegre = it is cheerful / it is a cheerful song

You would normally use ser for descriptions, identity, and more permanent or defining qualities.

What form of the verb is es?

Es is the third person singular form of ser in the present tense.

So:

yo soy = I am
tú eres = you are
él/ella es = he/she is

Because la canción is singular, the verb must also be singular:

La canción es alegre.

Why doesn’t alegre change to match the feminine noun?

Some Spanish adjectives change form for gender, but others do not.

Alegre is an adjective with the same form for masculine and feminine singular:

el niño alegre
la niña alegre

It only changes for number:

singular: alegre
plural: alegres

So in this sentence, alegre stays the same even though canción is feminine.

Would the word order ever be La alegre canción?

Yes, it is possible, but it is less neutral.

The most basic and common structure is:

La canción es alegre.

If you put the adjective before the noun, as in la alegre canción, it sounds more literary, poetic, or stylistically marked. It is not the usual way to say this simple idea in everyday speech.

So for a learner, La canción es alegre is the normal pattern to use.

What does the accent mark in canción do?

The accent mark shows where the stress goes: can-CIÓN.

Without the accent, Spanish spelling rules would make you stress it differently. The written accent tells you the final syllable is stressed.

It is also important for correct spelling, so you should write:

canción ✅
cancion ❌

How is canción pronounced in Spain?

In Spain, a common pronunciation is roughly:

la = lah
canción = kan-thyon in much of Spain
es = ess
alegre = ah-LEH-greh

A few notes:

The c before i in much of Spain sounds like the th in think, so ción sounds like thyon.
The g in alegre is a hard g, like in get.
The r in alegre is a light tapped r.

Could I leave out la and just say Canción es alegre?

Normally, no.

In Spanish, singular countable nouns usually need an article or another determiner when you are speaking generally about a specific thing:

La canción es alegre.

Leaving out the article here sounds unnatural. Spanish uses articles more often than English does in some cases.

How would this change in the plural?

It would become:

Las canciones son alegres. = The songs are cheerful.

The changes are:

la → las
canción → canciones
es → son
alegre → alegres

Everything has to agree in number.

Can alegre mean something slightly different from happy?

Yes. Alegre often means cheerful, lively, or joyful, not just happy in a personal emotional sense.

With canción, alegre usually suggests that the song sounds upbeat, bright, or cheerful.

So even if the English translation says happy, the Spanish adjective can carry the sense of cheerful or lively very naturally.

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