Mi cinturón y mi sombrero son viejos, pero los de mi padre son nuevos.

Questions & Answers about Mi cinturón y mi sombrero son viejos, pero los de mi padre son nuevos.

How does los de translate to "my father's"?
Spanish doesn't use an apostrophe-'s to show possession. Instead, it uses the word de (of). To avoid repeating the words for "belt" and "hat", we use the pronoun los (the ones). So, los de mi padre literally translates to "the ones of my father."
Why do we use los instead of el, la, or las here?
The word los is replacing the two items mentioned earlier: mi cinturón (my belt) and mi sombrero (my hat). Because there are two items in total, we need a plural word. Since both nouns are masculine, the plural replacement must be the masculine los.
Does los de mi padre mean my dad has multiple belts and hats?
Not necessarily. It just means the total number of items belonging to your dad is more than one. Here, he has one belt and one hat, which equals two items, so we use the plural los to refer to his set of items.
Why are viejos and nuevos masculine plural?
They describe the belt and the hat together! Since you are talking about two items, the adjectives describing them must be plural. As a quick reminder: in Spanish, when you group multiple nouns together and at least one is masculine, the adjective describing the group defaults to the masculine plural form (viejos and nuevos).

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