I don’t speak Spanish, although I’ve been known to frequent Mexican restaurants.
The definite article – I understand that Spanish is a gendered language and that therefore there are different forms of “the” depending on whether the noun to follow is “masculine”, “feminine”, or “neuter” – La Bamba, Los Angeles, Las Vegas.
What the heck is “El”, then?
Is one of these four a definite article for plural nouns? Is there a fourth gender?
– El Gringo
El and La are the singular form of masculine and feminine articles. Los and Las are the plural forms.
While we’re on the topic, when does one use “ello(s)”?
Ello = he
Ellos = they (masc)
Ella = she
Ellas = they (fem)
As a side note, there’s also a neuter article, “lo,” but the neuter in Spanish is rare. It’s mostly used for abstractions: “lo bueno” means The Good, in the grand, cosmic, philosophical sense. Not the sort of thing you need to bother with in everyday life.
Fretful Porpentine is right, lo is about the closest thing you’ll get to neuter in Spanish. Though I’d argue that lo is something you need to know - you use it to say “the x thing” - where x is some adjective like… important, good, bad… “the important thing” can be said as “la cosa importante”, but it’s MUCH better/simpler as “lo importante”.
Otherwise, everything’s either masculine or feminine. Every noun, that is. And when the noun is an animal, or something else that has naughty bits, the gender of the WORD doesn’t necessarily have a thing to do with the gender of the creature.
And then sometimes you use the definite article that doesn’t correspond to the actual gender of the word, like with “el agua”, which is actually feminine, but you DON’T do that when it’s plural, and…
…I think I’ll just stop here.
elfbabe was getting at the point that in some instances the gender of the article changes to make the word easier to say. “La arte” would just sound like “lahrte”.
But then again some words that end in “-a” like “dia” get the masculine article. And I think all words that end in “-ma” are masculine.
I’m not sure about all words that end in “-ma”, but all words that are imported from greek are: “El Mapa”, por ejemplo.
I should say, if it’s masculine in Greek, it’s masculine in Spanish, no matter the ending.
http://www.orbilat.com/Modern_Romance/Ibero-Romance/Spanish/Grammar/Spanish-Noun.html
Actually,
Ello = that
Él = he
Zapper, ello can also be a form of él (not likely to be used, él is more common).
The most common forms of that are aquél and aquello, the last one is the neutral form, and aquella is the femenine form.
Yeap, I was going to clarify that.
‘Ello’ is the neutral gender for 3rd person, ‘él’ for masculine and ‘ella’ for femenine.
The plurals are, respectively, ‘ellos’, ‘ellos’ and ‘ellas’. At least, ‘ellos’ would be for the neutral gender, but, honestly, I’m not sure if it’s correct (I’m not sure if it exists :)).
Articles for them are ‘lo/los’, ‘lo/los’ and ‘la/las’ (singular/plural).
Those are direct object pronouns. 
Indirect object pronoun for them is les.
If you need a pronoun for a group of people with both genders, use the masculine “ellos.” That’s generally true for nouns, too. For example “abuelos” can mean grandparents of both genders. Two grandmothers are “abuelas.”
To confuse things even further, the pronoun “se” can be singular or plural, and takes the place of “les” when used with an direct object as an indirect object.
Se lo dije. I told him/her/them that.
Se los di. I gave him/her/them those.
“-ma,” “-pa,” and “-ta” words are often imported from greek… where they were masculine, so they stayed masculine.
“El” is the masculine singlular article. (example: el chico.)
“La” is the feminine singular article. (example: la chica.)
“Los” is the masucline plural article. (example: los chicos.)
“Las” is the feminine plural article. (example: las chicas.)
However: if “el” has an accent over the “e”, it is not an article. Instead, that means “he.”
Thanks everybody!
¡ muchas gracias!
Ello and Ellos are typically used either as part of another word or phrase, I have no idea what that rule is called, making an oblique reference to something in the third person, as in:
“Aquello que no se ve” “That which is not seen”
“Ello es que te dije” “The previous is what I told you”
The second example, as mentioned before is not used much, so much so that I don’t think I’ve ever used it, and may have read it once or twice, but never heard it, and I’m a native spanish speaker.
I’m pretty sure ello is never used in the same context as el, which is always third person singular masculine.
It exists, but it is not correct to use ellos as a neutral gender pronoun. The neutral gender is always singular, never plural.
You can, however, utilize ellos as a masculin pronoun.