Bastante, how to use it (as mucho, demasiado or poco)

Bastante, how to use it (as mucho, demasiado or poco)

Today we want to talk about how to use bastante, which I find it's translated wrong many times, but also understand a bigger picture.

Feel free to skip to the bastante section and read the first section later, although I'd recommend it.

How it's the same as mucho, demasiado and poco

I have a blogpost on muy/mucho, a video on muy/mucho, also a blogpost on demasiado and another post on poco/un poco, tan/tanto and all of them with practice included.

Now, the reason why I think it's important to refer to those is because all of these words have the same combinations: you can use them with an adjective (describing word), with a verb (an action), or a noun (for amount of things, places, people...).

So, I would suggest to learn them all together or close together and understand them as a whole, in the long run they're going to really help each other stay in your mind.

If you dig a bit more you see more of a pattern: with an adjective is a short version (muy, demasiado, poco), with a verb is the masculine singular version (mucho, demasiado, poco) and with a noun it agrees with the gender and number of it, so you have four versions (mucho/a/os/as, demasiado/a/os/as, poco/a/os/as, tanto/a/os/as).

So this is what we're going to see in bastante as well.

  • Note: with poco the blogpost also talks about the difference between poco and un poco, which is an extra variation that the other ones don't have, so make sure you read that too before using it.

Bastante with an adjective

We use bastante before a describing word (quality, state, characteristic, feeling...) and the translation would be: quite ... or pretty...

For example:

  • Estoy basntante cansada hoy - I'm pretty tired today/ I'm quite tired today.

  • La casa es bastante espaciosa - The house is pretty/quite spacious.

With a verb

We also use the form bastante, and here the translation is to do something "quite a lot".

Examples:

  • Ellos se preocupan bastante por ti - They worry quite a lot about you.

  • Trabajáis bastante el sábado - You guys work quite a lot on Saturdays.

With a noun

Here we use it to express amount, and we have two versions: singular and plural (there is no feminine/masculine version, as often with a word ending in an -e). The translation is again quite a lot of

Examples:

  • Tenéis bastantes cuadros en casa - You guys have quite a lot of paintings at home.

  • Vimos bastantes estatuas en el museo - We saw quite a lot of statues in the museum.

  • Pierdes bastante tiempo en las redes sociales- You waste quite a lot of time on social media.

Practice

Fill in the gaps with: bastante or bastantes.

  • Vamos a invitar a _____ gente a la fiesta - we're going to invite ______people to the party.

  • Mi perro tiene________ energía por la mañana - My dog has ______ energy in the morning.

  • Por esa razón juego _______ con él - For that reason, I play _______ with him.

  • Tu novio me parece _________ listo - Your boyfriend seems _____ clever to me.

  • Ellos hacen ________ cosas en su tiempo libre- They do ______ things in their free time.

  • Los coches hacen _________ ruido - The cars make ______ noise.

  • Mi sobrino tiene ________ juguetes - My nephew has _______ toys.

bastante/bastante/bastante/bastante/bastantes/bastante/bastantes

¡Perfecto! ¡Buena suerte con bastante! :)


vocab Practice Explanations