Breakdown of El profesor tiene trece libros y catorce estudiantes.
y
and
el libro
the book
el estudiante
the student
el profesor
the teacher
tener
to have
trece
thirteen
catorce
fourteen
Questions & Answers about El profesor tiene trece libros y catorce estudiantes.
Why don't trece and catorce have plural forms like treces and catorces to match the nouns?
Unlike adjectives, most numbers in Spanish do not change their form to match the noun they count. They stay exactly the same whether they describe something masculine, feminine, singular, or plural. The only exception is the number one (uno, which becomes un or una) and larger numbers that end in one.
Is there a trick to remembering the spelling of trece and catorce?
Yes! The numbers 11 through 15 all end in -ce: once (11), doce (12), trece (13), catorce (14), and quince (15). You can see how trece looks a bit like tres (3) and catorce looks like cuatro (4).
Where does the word tiene come from?
How do we know if the estudiantes are male or female?
We actually do not know from this sentence alone. The word estudiante ends in -e, meaning the word itself is the exact same for both men and women. To specify the gender, you would normally look at the words around it, like using los estudiantes for a male or mixed group, or las estudiantes for an all-female group.
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