LingoflySpanish grammar
Spanish grammar explained in plain words. No cases, and gender is usually visible in the ending. What is harder: two verbs “to be” (ser and estar), the subjunctive and a verb ending for every person.
Notes
- 📐ser and estar — two verbs 'to be'Spanish keeps two verbs where English has one 'to be', and you choose between them in almost every sentence.
- 📐Gender and articles: el / laEvery noun carries a gender, and the article travels with it. Learn the word together with its article: la casa, not…
- 📐The present tense: -ar, -er, -irRegular verbs fall into three groups by their ending: -ar, -er, -ir. You drop that ending and add one of your own…
- 📐Questions and the inverted marksA question opens with ¿ and closes with ? The upside-down mark is not decoration: from the first character the reader…
- 📐gustar — 'to be pleasing', not 'to like'Me gusta el café is, word for word, 'coffee pleases me'. The coffee is the subject and you are the one it happens to.…
- 📐Negation: just noNegation is one word in front of the verb, and nothing else moves: no entiendo, no hay agua.
- 📐Comparison: más barato que…To compare, you stack three bricks: más (more) or menos (less), then the quality, then que for 'than'.
- 📐un or el: the article decides whether we already knowThe article answers one question: does the listener already know which one you mean? Something new comes in with un /…
- 📐Where it hurts: me duele'My head hurts' turns inside out in Spanish: it's the head that hurts, and 'me' stands to the side. Me duele la cabeza…
- 📐The fifteen strong preterites that cannot be derivedRegular verbs in the indefinido are stem plus ending, and there are only two sets of endings. The catch is that the…
- 📐The past: what came to an endFor yesterday and for anything finished, Spanish uses the pretérito indefinido: ayer compré un billete, el año pasado…
- 📐Asking with usted: espere, relleneThe usted command swaps the vowel. Verbs in -ar take -e: esperar → espere. Verbs in -er and -ir take -a: comer → coma…
- 📐Asking with tú: espera, firmaFor tú the request is easy to build: take the él form of the present. Espera — wait. Firma aquí — sign here. Eight…
- 📐Espéreme: the pronoun at the end of a requestPronouns stick to the end of a request: espere → espéreme, explique → explíquemelo. The word grows longer, but the…
- 📐A request that doesn't sound like an orderA bare command sounds blunt in Spain, so people soften it into a question. ¿Me puede ayudar? ¿Podría venir mañana? With…
- 📐Tomorrow: ir a plus the plain verbFor tomorrow, conversation most often uses ir a plus the plain verb. Only ir changes: voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van.…
- 📐The one-word future: viajaré, saldráThe future can also be said in one word: the futuro simple. The endings -é, -ás, -á, -emos, -éis, -án hook onto the…
- 📐Estará en la playa: the future as a guessThe future form has a surprising second job: in everyday speech it often means a guess about now. ¿Dónde está Ana?…
- 📐Give me that: the short pronounsEnglish puts 'me' or 'it' after the verb. Spanish puts a short word in front of it and keeps two rows. Whom or what…
- 📐The article where English would use nothingEnglish leaves the article out in places where Spanish insists on one, so the safer habit is to expect it.
- 📐The plural drags the whole phrase with itThe plural takes two endings. A word ending in a vowel adds -s: playa → las playas. A word ending in a consonant adds…
- 📐Have to, may, mustEnglish 'have to' splits in two here. Hay que plus the plain verb is a duty with nobody's name on it: hay que reservar…
- 📐This, that and that one over thereEnglish points twice, with 'this' and 'that'. Spanish points three times. Este is what is by me, ese what is by you…
- 📐My, your and the treacherous suMis hermanos — my brothers: mis is plural because there are several brothers, not because there's more than one of you.…
- 📐Very or a lot: muy and muchoEnglish 'very' and 'a lot' land in fixed places in Spanish, and swapping them is the first mistake everyone makes. Muy…
- 📐Mucha gente: a lot before a nounBefore a noun mucho takes gender and number: mucha gente, muchos invitados. After a verb it freezes: ella trabaja…
- 📐When there is no subjectSome sentences have nobody acting in them: 'it's cold', 'you have to', 'they say'. Spanish puts the verb in the él form…
- 📐Two thoughts in one sentenceTwo thoughts join into one sentence through a conjunction. The main one is que, 'that': creo que sí, dice que llega…
- 📐How much exactly: mucho, poco, bastante, todoWords for 'much', 'few' and 'all' do not behave alike: some agree with the noun, some do not.
- 📐The one that: que, donde and one forkWhen one adjective is not enough, you need the part of the sentence English opens with 'that' or 'which'.
- 📐The superlative: el más, -ísimo and mejorThe superlative is the comparative plus an article, and nothing more: el más caro, la más cara, los más caros. Spanish…
- 📐El condicional: 'I would do it'To say 'I would', Spanish has a tense of its own, el condicional. The endings -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían hook…
- 📐¿Podría…?: the polite request and adviceMost of the time the -ía form does politeness. ¿Podría enviarme el contrato? is softer than ¿puede?, and me gustaría is…
- 📐Si tuviera…: 'would' in an unreal conditionThe -ía form also works in an unreal condition: si tuviera experiencia, me contratarían. The condicional itself never…
- 📐To what degree: muy, bastante, demasiadoAn adjective rarely stands alone: a word saying how much usually comes with it. Those words never change, for gender or…
- 📐How long it has been going on: estar, llevar, acabar deEnglish marks 'was doing' and 'did' on the verb itself. Spanish uses set phrases instead, and each one shows where the…
- 📐He said that: reported speech and the shift of tensesEnglish shifts the tense back when it repeats someone's words, and Spanish does the same, only more strictly. If the…
- 📐Who did it doesn't matter: the passive and seThe language of offices and news gets by without naming who acts: 'applications are accepted until Friday', 'two were…
- 📐Two thoughts in full: cause, condition, purpose, concessionSpanish has many conjunctions but one rule behind them: did the thing happen or not? If it did, the verb is ordinary.…
- 📐Discourse connectors: position in the sentence and the commaSin embargo, además and por cierto are not conjunctions. A conjunction glues two halves of one sentence. These stand in…
- 📐Ser and estar about a person: what kind of person and how they are nowDescribing a person, you have to pick between ser and estar, and the pick changes the meaning rather than the shade.
- 📐Feelings inside out: me gusta, me molesta, me da vergüenzaEnglish puts the person first: 'I like coffee', 'I'm embarrassed'. Spanish turns the sentence over. The thing that…
- 📐Kitchen Spanish: the imperative and the impersonal seA recipe can be written two ways, and Spanish uses both. As a command: pela las patatas, añade agua, remueve. Or with…
- 📐Lo, la, le and se lo: how not to name the thing twiceIn a shop you cannot manage without pronouns: the thing is named once and then talked about for five sentences. Spanish…
- 📐Se me ha roto: how Spanish lifts the blame for a breakdown'I broke the phone' and 'the phone broke on me' are two different sentences, and the second is gentler. Spanish has a…
- 📐Verbs with a broken stem: llueve, muerde, florezcoSpanish verbs change at the front as well as at the end. In a good hundred of them the stressed vowel in the stem…
- 📐Where it is and how to get there: prepositions of place, del and alGiving directions has two halves: saying where the place is, and saying how to walk there.
- 📐Skilled, able, acquainted: saber, poder, conocer and se me da bienEnglish 'can' covers both skill and opportunity; Spanish splits them. Saber is skill, something learned: sé nadar, sé…
- 📐El imperfecto: the backdrop of the past and its quarrel with the indefinidoA childhood cannot be told with the indefinido alone. A life has events, but it also has the backdrop they happened…
- 📐How Spanish softens: the request, the refusal and the word 'es que'A Spaniard speaks more directly than you might expect, except in requests and refusals. There the language keeps a set…
- 📐Naming a profession: gender, the -ista ending and 'soy médico' with no articleA profession in Spanish is a noun with two forms, one masculine and one feminine. The main row ends in -o and -a: el…
- 📐Subjuntivo: the mood for what doesn't exist yetWhen you talk about what is wanted, demanded or still to come, the Spanish verb changes its ending completely. The…
- 📐La gente, la mayoría, todo el mundo: words about the many in the singularTalking about society trips people up on the number of the verb, not on the words themselves.
- 📐The neuter lo: lo mejor, lo que más me gustó, lo de siempreSpanish nouns have two genders, but the article has three: besides el and la there is lo. No noun ever follows it.
- 📐Sports are done, games are played: hacer, jugar a, practicar and the extra seEnglish 'do' covers running, football and yoga alike. Spanish picks the verb by whether the activity has an opponent…
- 📐How many meters: medir, pesar, de largo and el dobleEnglish says 'the bridge is a hundred meters long'. Spanish prefers a verb, and builds the sentence differently.
- 📐Became: ponerse, quedarse, volverse, hacerseEnglish 'became' fits every case: became pale, became deaf, became a doctor. Spanish has no single verb for it, but…
- 📐What people usually do: soler, cada and the prepositions of holidaysA habit is what you always do, and Spanish has a verb for it that English lacks.
- 📐Creo que es, no creo que sea: opinion, judgement and someone else's orderIn an argument negation decides everything. The subjuntivo — the form for what is not put forward as fact — does a…
- 📐Si tengo, si tuviera, si hubiera tenido: three kinds of 'if'English keeps one 'if' and marks the rest with 'would'. Spanish has three conditions and changes the verb in both…
- 📐What a thing is and what state it's in: ser and estar with objectsWith objects the fork between ser and estar decides almost every word about properties. And it decides not by what the…
- 📐Rusty, crumpled, faded: the participle standing in for the adjectiveHalf the words for the state of a thing are not adjectives but participles, forms made from a verb. Oxidado comes from…
- 📐Walk up to, step away from, walk past: a motion verb plus its prepositionEnglish packs direction into the verb: walk up, walk away, walk past. Spanish keeps the verb and adds a preposition it…
- 📐A third, twice over, an order of magnitude: fractions and multiplesSpanish counts fractions and multiples its own way, and a word-for-word translation gives nonsense.
- 📐From a verb a noun: -ción, -miento, -dad and kinEnglish 'measurement', 'observation' and 'achievement' have Spanish counterparts built from verbs by rule. Learn the…
- 📐How long ago and when: hace, desde, desde hace, dentro deEnglish has one 'ago' and one 'in'. Spanish keeps several phrases apart, and even fluent speakers mix them up.
- 📐He hablado or hablé: which past to chooseEnglish 'I spoke' is one form; Spanish has two, he hablado and hablé. Both come out the same in English, and the choice…
- 📐Había llegado: the past before the pastA story needs a third past, and it is the easiest of them to build: había plus a participle. Había llegado, habíamos…
- 📐The order of events: al, en cuanto, nada más, mientrasA story holds together at the seams between events. Spanish sews them with phrases that have no one-word English match.
- 📐What a person is like: character suffixes and ser against estarWords for character are nearly all a noun plus an ending. Know the rows and you will understand a word you have never…
- 📐The se that changes the meaning: quedarse, meterse, llevarseSe has a role that throws people: it changes the verb's meaning completely instead of adding 'oneself'. Such pairs have…
- 📐¿Cómo estás? or ¿qué tal?: two ways to ask how things areBoth phrases mean 'how are things', but they are built differently. ¿Cómo estás? uses the verb estar and asks about…
- 📐Pedir or preguntar: to ask for or to ask aboutEnglish 'ask' looks both ways: you ask a question and you ask for the bill. Spanish splits them. Preguntar is to put a…
- 📐Prestar or pedir prestado: to lend or to borrowEnglish keeps 'lend' and 'borrow' apart, and so does Spanish. The catch: the second of the two is a phrase, not a verb.…
- 📐Buenas tardes or buenas noches: where the Spanish day endsThe Spanish day is cut in different places from the English one, and the greeting trips on it. La mañana runs until the…
What works differently from what you know
Two verbs “to be”, and the difference is about meaning, not grammar. Es aburrido — he is a boring person; está aburrido — he is bored right now. One word changes, and with it what is being said: character or this minute.
Real Academia Española, «Nueva gramática de la lengua española», 2009
What is hard about Spanish and what comes for free
Hard: two verbs “to be” (ser and estar), the subjunctive and a verb ending for every person.
Easy: no cases, and gender is usually visible in the ending.
This is not a verdict on the language but a hint on where to spend effort. The hard parts are best taken a little at a time and often; the easy parts — left alone while they work by themselves.
Frequently asked
Is the grammar of Spanish complicated?
Two verbs “to be” (ser and estar), the subjunctive and a verb ending for every person is the main difficulty. In return, no cases, and gender is usually visible in the ending.
Should grammar be learned separately?
Not as a separate course. A rule learned before you need it is forgotten before you meet it. It is more useful to work it out at the moment you stumble over it.