Learn Spanish (Spain): Las flores son rojas y bonitas.

Las flores son rojas y bonitas.

The flowers are red and pretty.

Breakdown of Las flores son rojas y bonitas.

Questions & Answers about Las flores son rojas y bonitas.

Why do the words for "red" and "pretty" end in -as (rojas, bonitas)?

They are describing flores (flowers), which is a feminine, plural noun. In Spanish, adjectives must change their endings to match the gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural) of the noun they describe. Since the default dictionary forms are rojo and bonito, we change the -o to -as.

How can I tell that flores is feminine? It doesn't end in -as.

Not all feminine words end in -a. The singular word for flower is flor, which just happens to be feminine. The best clue in this sentence is the word right before it: las. Because las is the feminine plural word for "the", it tells you that flores must be feminine.

What would this sentence look like if there were only one flower?

It would be La flor es roja y bonita. Notice how every single word has to change to its singular form: las becomes la, flores drops the -es, the verb son changes to es, and both adjectives drop their final -s.

Why is the verb son used here instead of están?