Breakdown of Las hermanas del estudiante están cansadas.
el estudiante
student
de
from / of
la hermana
the sister
las
the (feminine plural)
Questions & Answers about Las hermanas del estudiante están cansadas.
Why does it say del estudiante instead of using an apostrophe 's' like in English?
Where does the word del come from?
Del is a mandatory contraction. Whenever the preposition de (of) is followed immediately by the masculine word for "the", el, they combine into del. So, de + el = del.
How do we know the student is male?
The noun estudiante doesn't change based on gender. We have to look at the words around it to know if we are talking about a male or female student. Because the sentence uses del (which contains the masculine el), we know this specific student is male. If it were a female student, the sentence would use de la estudiante (which does not contract).
Why is the word for tired spelled cansadas instead of cansados?