A Spanish learner asked a question in a Facebook group. He was learning with Duolingo and had to translate “I want all of them minus that one” into Spanish. He had written Quiero todos menos eso, and was asking why eso was wrong. I guess Duolingo had marked it as wrong.

Many Spanish learners have problems when it comes to using the demonstratives:

	masc. sing.	fem. sing.	neuter	masc. plural	fem. plural
this / these	este	esta	esto	estos	estas
that / those	ese	esa	eso	esos	esas
that / those (far away)	aquel	aquella	aquello	aquellos	aquellas

As you can see, the neuter forms of demonstratives end in -o, which is the typical ending for the masculine forms of most adjectives and determiners, while the masculine forms of demonstratives end in -e or -l.

When learners forget this, they tend to use the neuter forms as if they were masculine.

However, the truth is that there is not enough context in that exercise to write a definitive sentence in Spanish.

In English, most nouns have no gender, and neither do the adjective “all” nor the pronoun “them”. But, as you probably know already, all nouns have a gender in Spanish, and “all” and “them” translate into words with different forms in Spanish, depending on the nouns they refer to.

The Spanish equivalent of “all” has 4 different forms:

	masc. sing.	fem. sing.	neuter	masc. plural	fem. plural
all	todo	toda	todo	todos	todas

And the Spanish equivalent of “them” has 2 different forms:

	masculine	feminine
them	ellos	ellas

If we were referring to items that are described with masculine nouns in Spanish, we would say todos ellos or simply todos.

If we were referring to items that are described with feminine nouns in Spanish, we would say todas ellas or simply todas.

So, the sentence “I want all of them minus that one” could be:

• Quiero todos menos ese.
• Quiero todas menos esa.

Depending on the gender of the nouns related to the items we refer to.

There should be a reference to those nouns in the conversation, or be obvious to the listener.

If we were referring to a miscellaneous group of items, and the item we didn’t want was something we can’t name, then we could use the neuter forms todo and eso:

• Quiero todo menos eso.

I hope that this explanation is helpful.

If you have any question related to the Spanish language, don’t hesitate to let me know. I will answer it with pleasure.