Spanish grammar

Spanish is a language where words change, usually at the end, to show their role in a sentence. This is called an inflected language. Verbs, which are action words, can change to show when something happened, how it happened, and who is involved. Nouns, which are names of people, places, or things, change to show if they are singular or plural and whether they are masculine or feminine. Personal pronouns, which stand in place of nouns, also change in similar ways.

Spanish was the first European language to have a grammar book. This book, called Gramática de la lengua castellana, was published in 1492 by Antonio de Nebrija, a scholar from Andalusia. He presented it to Queen Isabella of Castile.

Today, the rules for Spanish are guided by the Royal Spanish Academy, known as the RAE. While there are small differences in how Spanish is spoken in Spain and in America, people can usually understand each other well. There are many helpful books in English that explain Spanish grammar in detail.

Verbs

Main articles: Spanish verbs, Spanish conjugation, and Spanish irregular verbs

In Spanish, every verb belongs to one of three groups based on how it ends: -ar, -er, or -ir. Verbs change their endings to show when something happens, who is doing it, and other details.

Spanish verbs can change their endings in many ways. They can show if something is happening now, happened in the past, or will happen later. They also change to show who is doing the action, like "I", "you", or "they". There are special ways to talk about wishes or dreams.

Present indicative

The present indicative is used to talk about things that are happening right now or are true now. For example:

• Soy alto. (I am tall.)
• Ella canta en el club. (She sings in the club.)
• Todos nosotros vivimos en un submarino amarillo. (We all live in a yellow submarine.)
• Son las diez y media. ([It] is half past ten.)

Past tenses

Spanish has special ways to talk about things that happened in the past. Two common ways are the preterite and the imperfect.

Preterite

The preterite is used for actions that happened and ended in the past. For example:

• Pablo apagó las luces. (Pablo turned the lights off.)
• Yo me comí el arroz. (I ate the rice.)

Imperfect or "copretérito"

The imperfect is used for actions that were ongoing or happening for a while in the past. For example:

• Yo era cómico en el pasado. (I was/used to be funny in the past.)
• Usted comía mucho. (You ate a lot.)
• Ellos escuchaban la radio. (They were listening to the radio.)

All three of the sentences above describe actions that were continuing in the past.

Present progressive and imperfect progressive

The present and imperfect progressive are used to talk about actions that are happening right now or were happening in the past. For example:

• Estoy haciendo mi tarea. (I am doing my homework.)
• Estamos estudiando. (We are studying.)
• Estaba escuchando la radio. (I was listening to the radio.)
• Él estaba limpiando su cuarto. (He was cleaning his room.)

Subjunctive

Main article: Subjunctive mood in Spanish

The subjunctive of a verb is used to talk about wishes, dreams, or things that are not certain. For example:

• Quiero que seas muy ambicioso. (I want you to be very ambitious.)
• Me alegro de que Marta traiga la comida. (I am happy that Marta brings the food.)
• Es una lástima que llegues tarde. (It is a shame that you arrive late.)

The subjunctive is also used to show doubt or uncertainty. For example:

• Busco un amigo que sea simpático. (I search for a friend who will be likable.)
• No hay ningún autor que lo escriba. (There are no authors who write that.)
• Es posible que ella sepa mucho. (It is possible that she knows a lot.)

Imperfect subjunctive

The imperfect subjunctive is used for wishes or uncertainties about the past. There are two common forms, and both are used interchangeably.

Nouns

Main articles: Spanish nouns and Grammatical gender in Spanish

In Spanish, every noun is either masculine or feminine. Many describing words change their endings to match the gender of the noun they describe. For people, the grammatical gender usually matches the actual gender of the person.

Adjectives

Main article: Spanish adjectives

Spanish uses adjectives in a similar way to English, but there are three important differences.

First, in Spanish, adjectives usually come after the noun they describe. For example, "my red house" is often mi casa roja. If someone wants to stress how red the house is, they might say mi roja casa.

Second, Spanish adjectives must match the noun they describe in number and gender. For example, taza (cup) is feminine, so "the red cup" is la taza roja. But vaso (glass) is masculine, so "the red glass" is el vaso rojo.

Lastly, it is common in Spanish to use an adjective alone to stand for a noun. For example, los altos means "the tall ones" or "the tall men", and el grande means "the big one" or "the big man".

Determiners

Main article: Spanish determiners

Spanish uses determiners like English does. They change a bit depending on whether they talk about one or many things and if they are masculine or feminine. Common determiners are el meaning "the", un meaning "a", este meaning "this", mucho meaning "much" or "a lot", and alguno meaning "some".

Pronouns

Main article: Spanish pronouns

Spanish pronouns are like English pronouns. They can be personal, showing who or what we are talking about, or demonstrative, showing this or that. They can also ask questions or connect ideas.

Personal pronouns change based on who we speak of — first, second, or third person — and can be singular (one) or plural (more than one). Spanish has special ways to speak to people politely or in a friendly way, and these can differ in different places.

Usually, you do not need to use the subject pronoun because the verb tells us who is doing the action. But sometimes, we use it to add emphasis or to make the meaning clearer.

Adverbs

Spanish adverbs work like adverbs in English. Words like muy ("very") and poco ("a little") are used in both languages. To make adverbs from adjectives in Spanish, we add the ending ‑mente to the feminine form of the adjective. For example, claro ("clear") becomes claramente ("clearly").

Some adverbs in Spanish look the same as their adjective forms, like temprano ("early") and lento ("slow"). These adverbs do not change.

The adjectives bueno ("good") and malo ("bad") have special adverb forms: bien ("well") and mal ("badly").

Main article: comparative Main article: superlative

Prepositions

Main article: Spanish prepositions

Spanish has many prepositions and does not use postpositions. Some common ones are: A, ante, bajo, cabe, con, contra, de, desde, en, entre, hacia, hasta, para, por, según, sin, so, sobre, tras. Two new prepositions have been added: durante and mediante.

In Spanish, prepositions do not change the meaning of a verb like they sometimes do in English. For example, to say "run out of water" or "run up a bill" in Spanish, you need to use different verbs instead of just adding a preposition to the word correr ("run"). This is because English uses special verb phrases, called phrasal verbs, more often than Spanish does.

Conjunctions

In Spanish, the words y ('and') and o ('or') can change their form in some cases. For example, y becomes e when it comes before a vowel sound, like in padre e hijo ('father and son'). Also, o can become u in words like sujeto u objeto ('subject or object').

These changes do not happen before some letter combinations or at the start of questions. When o is used between numbers, it used to have an accent mark, but now the plain form is used.

Syntax and syntactic variation

Order of constituents

Spanish usually follows a subject-verb-object order in sentences. But the order can change to show what you want to emphasize. You might see verb-subject-object (VSO), verb-object-subject (VOS), or object-verb-subject (OVS) orders.

For example, to say "My friend wrote the book," you could say:

• Mi amigo escribió el libro (SVO)

But you could also say:

• Hace pocos años escribió mi amigo un libro (VSO) = "A few years ago, my friend wrote a book"
• Ayer vio mi madre a mi amigo y le preguntó por su libro (VOS) = "Yesterday, my mother saw my friend and asked him about his book"

In questions, VSO order is common:

• ¿Escribió mi amigo el libro? = "Did my friend write the book?"

Cleft sentences

Spanish can emphasize parts of a sentence by changing the word order. For example, to say "It was Juan who lost the keys," you can say:

• Fue Juan el que perdió las llaves = "It was John who lost the keys"

You can also rearrange the words to emphasize different parts:

• Juan fue el que perdió las llaves = "Juan was the one who lost the keys"
• El que perdió las llaves fue Juan = "The one who lost the keys was Juan"

Clitic se

Clitics like se are important in Spanish. They can show actions done to yourself, or act as object pronouns. They can appear in different places in a sentence depending on the verb form.

For example:

• Ábrelo = "Open it."
• No lo abras. = "Don't open it."

With continuous verbs, the clitic can go before the auxiliary verb or after the participle:

• Juan lo estaba preparando = "John was preparing it"
• Juan estaba preparándolo = "John was preparing it"

In some cases, two clitics are used when both direct and indirect objects are involved:

• Te lo dije ayer. = "I told you yesterday."

Dialectal variations

Forms of address

In Spanish, usted and ustedes are used to speak politely. But casual speaking can differ. In Andalusia, the Canary Islands, and Latin America, ustedes is used instead of vosotros. In some parts of Andalusia, ustedes uses the vosotros endings.

In Latin America, people might use usted or vos instead of tú. This can change even in nearby villages. Visitors should use usted to be safe.

In the Dominican Republic and some other places, the way people speak can make some verb forms sound the same. They add extra words, like saying ¿tú ves? instead of ¿ves?.

Voseo

Main article: Voseo

Vos was once used as a polite way to speak. It mostly disappeared, but some areas use vos for casual speaking. This is called voseo. In voseo, the pronoun vos is used instead of tú, but te and tu are still used sometimes.

For verbs with vos in the present tense, they use the same endings as vosotros. For example:

• Vosotros habláis becomes vos hablás
• Vosotros tenéis becomes vos tenés
• Vosotros sois becomes vos sos

For verbs ending in -ís, the form for vos is the same:

• Vosotros vivís – vos vivís
• Vosotros oís – vos oís
• Vosotros huís – vos huís

In commands, the form for vos comes from vosotros, but the d ending is removed. If the word has more than one part, an accent is added to the last vowel:

• Tened (vosotros) becomes tené (vos)
• Dad (vosotros) becomes da (vos)

The verb ir (to go) does not have a command form for vos and uses the form from andar, which means to walk:

• Andad becomes andá

In the present subjunctive, the same rules as the present tense apply, though in Argentina, both vos and tú forms can be used:

• Que vosotros digáis – que vos digás Or:
• Que tú digas – que vos digas

Other tenses always use the same form for vos as for tú.

Outside Argentina, other mixes are possible. For example, in Maracaibo, people might use standard vosotros endings for vos (vos habláis, que vos habléis).

Vosotros imperative: -ar for -ad

In Spain, people sometimes use the infinitive instead of the proper command form for vosotros. This is not standard:

• ¡Venir! instead of ¡Venid!
• ¡Callaros! instead of ¡Callaos!
• ¡Iros! or ¡Marcharos! instead of ¡Idos!

Non-normative -s on tú form

An old way of speaking that is not standard uses an -s ending in the past tense for tú. For example, lo hicistes instead of the standard lo hiciste. Ladino goes even further with hablates.

Third-person object pronoun variation

The words used for him, her, or it can change depending on where you are. The Real Academia Española prefers using le for indirect objects and la or lo for direct objects.

The Academy also allows using le for direct objects when talking about males. When people use le for direct objects, it is called leísmo. Using la or lo for indirect objects is called laísmo or loísmo.

Here are some examples:

• Leísmo: Le miraron. Standard: lo miraron or la miraron.
• Laísmo: La dijeron que se callara. Standard: Le dijeron que se callara.
• Loísmo: Lo dijeron que se callara. Standard: Le dijeron que se callara.

Queísmo and dequeísmo

In Spanish, clauses starting with que are usually introduced by que, and when they come after the preposition de, it becomes de que. Sometimes, people shorten this to just que, which is called queísmo.

Some speakers, trying to avoid queísmo, add de before que even when it is not needed. This is called dequeísmo and is often linked to speakers who are less familiar with standard grammar.