None, no person, no people and nobody in Spanish

It is time to see the indefinite adjective –NONE– using it with nouns that in communication matters, can eventually be used, but specially it is very common the pronoun of it; The noun is going to be again, PERSON in its plural/singular mode – PERSONA, PERSONAS- and PEOPLE -GENTE-.

These indefinite adjectives do not exist in English, so the word that is closer to it is –NONE-. Using them, we do express a lack of quantity of the thing we are referring to. Basically, we do express an absence of that specific noun; So, using them, we do communicate that there is no one person –NON PERSON-. In English, it is used only the pronoun –NOBODY– to express that. In Spanish, of course, we do use the pronoun as well, but also it is completely fine to use the indefinite adjective –NONE– plus the noun, to express what the pronoun does.

See  first the table of the indeterminate adjective -NON- :

⊕ Plus:

◊ Remember that whenever we are using the indefinite adjective with a masculine/singular noun, we will always use NINGÚN.

NINGUNO IS A PRONOUN which means that we will use it, without a noun, but referring to it.

¿TIENES ALGÚN LIBRO?

DO YOU HAVE SOME BOOK?

→ PRONOUN –NINGUNO–:

NO, (YO) NO TENGO NINGUNO.

NO, I DO NOT HAVE NONE

(NO, I DO NOT HAVE ANY)

→ I. ADJECTIVE –NINGÚN–:

NO, (YO) NO TENGO NINGÚN LIBRO.

NO, I DO NOT HAVE NON BOOK     

(NO, I DO NOT HAVE ANY BOOK)

Now is just a matter of adding the right masculine/feminine or singular/plural indefinite adjective to the noun expressed:

NINGUNA PERSONA

NON PERSON

◊ Note that in this case, we are seeing a singular/feminine noun, therefore, the indefinite adjective will be feminine/singular.

♦ You might wonder, why in the table above, –NINGUNOS– and –NINGUNAS– are marked in red. Well, basically these two indefinite adjectives have a plural mode, and of course, when we do express an absence of quantity we can’t make that idea plural, because 0 it can’t be in idea plural.

NINGUNAS PERSONAS→ (INCORRECT)

NO PERSONS

→ You might also wonder, why then have we written down in the table if they are wrong in their use; Actually those two plural indefinite adjectives can be seen eventually in some literary works, such as poems, novels…When the author needs a wide vocabulary to accomplish the literary work. It is not our case, so we are going to forget about these two indefinite adjectives –NINGUNOS– y –NINGUNAS-.

NINGUNA GENTE→(INCORRECT)

NO PEOPLE

–NINGUNA GENTE– is wrong as well. Even though -GENTE- is a singular noun, it does have a plural meaning itself, so, when we express an absence of quantity we won’t use plural ideas, even if the word is singular; Again, we can’t express a lack of quantity in a plural idea.

In this case, we will always use : 

NINGUNA PERSONA

NO PERSON

→ Also, we can use a pronoun that expresses the same as the singular/feminine noun plus the indeterminate adjective –NINGUNA PERSONA-. 

Remember that a pronoun is used to express a noun without having the need of using the noun itself:

The meanings of the pronoun NADIE and NINGUNA PERSONA are exactly the same, so it is up to decide which one you use in your communication.

◊ Note that pronouns do not have singular/plural nor masculine/feminine mode; It will remain without any change as NADIE in order to express NOBODY.

→ So, remember the post overall:

♥ In the next post, we are going to change the noun; This time, we will be using –DÍA-, and of course, mixed with these indeterminate adjectives and finding the pronouns and adverbs in case that go along with it.