Spanish grammar
Spanish grammar explained in plain words. Spelled the way it sounds, a familiar alphabet, vocabulary you recognize from day one. What is harder: two verbs “to be”, the subjunctive mood, the speed of native speech.
Notes
- 📐ser and estar — two verbs 'to be'English gets one 'to be' for everything; Spanish insists on two, and the choice between them is the first habit to…
- 📐Gender and articles: el / laEvery noun has a gender, and the article travels with it. English has no equivalent — 'house' is just 'house' — so this…
- 📐The present tense: -ar, -er, -irAll regular verbs split into three groups by their infinitive ending. You strip the ending and attach your own — one…
- 📐Questions and the inverted marksA question opens with ¿ and closes with ?. This is not decoration: the reader knows from the very first character to…
- 📐gustar — 'to be pleasing', not 'to like'Me gusta el café is word-for-word 'coffee pleases me'. The subject here is the coffee, not 'I' — English puts the liker…
- 📐Negation: just noNegation goes right before the verb and changes nothing else: No entiendo, No hay agua.
- 📐Comparison: más barato que…The comparative is built from three bricks with almost no exceptions: más (more) or menos (less), then the quality…
- 📐un or el: the article decides whether we already knowThe article answers one question: does the listener already know which one we mean? New things are introduced 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 assemble their preterite from a stem and an ending, and there are exactly two sets of endings to learn.…
- 📐The past: what came to an endAbout yesterday, last year and anything finished, Spanish speaks in the pretérito indefinido: Ayer compré un billete…
- 📐A request that doesn't sound like an orderThe usted command is built with a twist: the vowels swap places. For -ar verbs the ending becomes -e (hablar → hable)…
- 📐Tomorrow: two futuresSpanish says 'tomorrow' two ways, and in speech the first wins: ir a + infinitive. Only ir is conjugated — voy, vas…
- 📐Give me that: the short pronounsSpanish squeezes 'to me', 'you', 'him' into short words that go before the verb. There are two sets. Direct object…
- 📐The article where English would use nothingSpanish reaches for an article far more often than English. The first approximation: something the listener already…
- 📐The plural drags the whole phrase with itPlurals take two endings. A word ending in a vowel adds -s (playa → playas), a word ending in a consonant — -es (color…
- 📐Have to, may, mustSpanish splits 'have to' in two. Hay que + infinitive — necessary in general, for everyone and no one in particular…
- 📐This, that and that one over thereEnglish points two ways — 'this' and 'that'. Spanish points three, and the third is no luxury: este — the thing near…
- 📐My, your and the treacherous suThe short possessives stand before the noun and agree with the thing, not the owner — the opposite of English, where…
- 📐Very, a lot, too much, probablyEnglish 'very' splits in two, and this is every beginner's first mistake. Muy stands only before an adjective or…
- 📐When there is no subjectSome sentences have no actor at all. English props them up with a dummy subject — 'it's cold', 'they say'; Spanish puts…
- 📐Two thoughts in one sentenceUntil now the course spoke in single replies. Four conjunctions tie two thoughts into one sentence, and three of them…
- 📐How much exactly: mucho, poco, todo, algunoThe words 'many', 'few', 'all' and 'some' are called quantifiers, and they share one big trap: some agree with the…
- 📐The noun phrase: word order and the relative clauseA Spanish noun phrase is built to a rigid plan: determiner — noun — adjective — everything else. La cuenta bancaria…
- 📐The superlative: el más, -ísimo and mejorThe course already knows the comparative: más caro que, menos caro que. The superlative is made out of it by adding the…
- 📐El condicional: 'I would do it' and the polite requestEnglish has one 'would' for every occasion; Spanish has a whole tense for it — el condicional — and it is the simplest…
- 📐To what degree: muy, bastante, demasiado and the comparison as a wholeAdjectives rarely walk alone: nearly always a word stands beside them saying how much. Those words never agree — not…
- 📐How long it has been going on: estar, llevar, acabar deEnglish separates 'I wait' from 'I have been waiting' with an auxiliary; Spanish builds the same shades from an…
- 📐He said that: reported speech and the shift of tensesEnglish retells someone's words by shifting the tense back — 'I am coming' becomes 'he said he was coming'. Spanish is…
- 📐Who did it doesn't matter: the passive and seThe language of institutions and news is built from sentences with no actor: 'documents are submitted by Friday', 'two…
- 📐Two thoughts in full: cause, condition, purpose, concessionWave 2 showed four conjunctions: que, porque, si, cuando. They are enough to get by with and not enough to reason with.…
- 📐Discourse connectors: position in the sentence and the commaSin embargo, además, por cierto, en resumen are not conjunctions. A conjunction (pero, porque, aunque) glues two halves…
- 📐Ser and estar about a person: what kind of person and how they are nowEnglish hears the difference in 'he is funny' against 'he is being funny'; Spanish has to make the same choice with the…
- 📐Feelings inside out: me gusta, me molesta, me da vergüenzaEnglish puts the person up front as the subject: 'I love coffee', 'I am embarrassed'. Spanish turns the sentence…
- 📐Kitchen Spanish: the imperative and the impersonal seA recipe can be written two ways, and Spanish uses both. The first is the command: pela las patatas, añade agua…
- 📐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 spoken about for five sentences in a…
- 📐Se me ha roto: how Spanish lifts the blame for a breakdownEnglish already has this dodge: 'I broke the phone' and 'the phone broke (on me)' place the blame differently. Spanish…
- 📐Verbs with a broken stem: llueve, muerde, florezcoA Spanish verb changes not only at the end. In a good hundred verbs, when the stress lands on the stem, the vowel in it…
- 📐Where it is and how to get there: prepositions of place, del and alExplaining the way is a task of two halves: say where it is, and say how to go. The first half rests on prepositions of…
- 📐Skilled, able, acquainted: saber, poder, conocer and se me da bienEnglish folds 'I can' and 'I know how' into one verb; Spanish splits them, and the choice is not stylistic. Saber…
- 📐El imperfecto: the backdrop of the past and its quarrel with the indefinidoThe course already knows indefinido — the past for what came to an end: ayer compré, nací en Moscú. A childhood cannot…
- 📐How Spanish softens: the request, the refusal and the word 'es que'A Spaniard speaks more bluntly than an English speaker in almost everything except requests and refusals: there the…
- 📐Naming a profession: gender, the -ista ending and 'soy médico' with no articleA profession in Spanish is a noun that almost always has a pair: a masculine and a feminine form. The main row is -o…
- 📐Subjuntivo: the mood for what doesn't exist yetUntil this wave every verb stood in the indicative: it reports what is. Spanish needs more than that. When speech turns…
- 📐La gente, la mayoría, todo el mundo: words about the many in the singularTalking about society trips not over the words but over the number of the verb. Spanish counts people differently than…
- 📐The neuter lo: lo mejor, lo que más me gustó, lo de siempreA Spanish noun has two genders, but the article has three: beside el and la there is lo, and no noun ever follows it.…
- 📐Sports are done, games are played: hacer, jugar a, practicar and the extra seEnglish 'do sports' covers running, football and yoga alike. Spanish picks the verb by whether the activity has an…
- 📐How many meters: medir, pesar, de largo and el dobleEnglish names size with an adjective or a noun: 'the bridge is a hundred meters long'. Spanish prefers a verb, and the…
- 📐Became: ponerse, quedarse, volverse, hacerseEnglish has one 'became' for every change: became pale, became deaf, became a doctor, became unbearable — well, not…
- 📐What people usually do: soler, cada and the prepositions of holidaysHabit is what people do the same way every time, and Spanish has a dedicated verb for it that English lacks.
- 📐Creo que es, no creo que sea: opinion, judgement and someone else's orderThe course has already seen subjuntivo after para que, quiero que and cuando. In an argument it does a different job…
- 📐Si tengo, si tuviera, si hubiera tenido: three kinds of 'if'English 'if' is one word, and its 'would' attaches to the verb without touching time. Spanish distinguishes three…
- 📐What a thing is and what state it's in: ser and estar with objectsThe course already split ser and estar on people: what a person is by essence and how they feel right now. On objects…
- 📐Rusty, crumpled, faded: the participle standing in for the adjectiveHalf the words about a thing's condition in this unit are not adjectives but participles: oxidado from oxidar, gastado…
- 📐Walk up to, step away from, walk past: a motion verb plus its prepositionEnglish stores direction in the particle: walk up to, move away from, pop in. Spanish has no prefixes to stack — it…
- 📐A third, twice over, an order of magnitude: fractions and multiplesSpanish counts in fractions and in times differently from English, and in three spots a word-for-word rendering…
- 📐From a verb a noun: -ción, -miento, -dad and kinThe units about quantity, progress and knowledge stand on nouns made from verbs: 'measurement', 'observation'…
- 📐How long ago and when: hace, desde, desde hace, dentro deEnglish gets by with one 'ago' and one 'in'. Spanish keeps four different constructions for this, and even people who…
- 📐He hablado or hablé: which past to chooseEnglish has the same fork and the same logic: 'I have spoken' against 'I spoke'. Both Spanish forms translate the same…
- 📐Había llegado: the past before the past and the marking of a storyThe course already knows two pasts: indefinido (llegué) — what happened, and imperfecto (llegaba) — what was backdrop.…
- 📐The order of events: al, en cuanto, nada más, mientrasA story holds not on its words but on the seams between them. Spanish stitches events together with constructions that…
- 📐What a person is like: character suffixes and ser against estarThe unit about character stands on adjectives, and almost all of them are assembled from a noun plus a suffix. Knowing…
- 📐The se that changes the meaning: quedarse, meterse, llevarseThe course has already seen se in two roles: reflexive (me lavo) and accidental (se me cayó). There is a third, and it…
- 📐¿Cómo estás? or ¿qué tal?: two ways to ask how things areBoth phrases translate the same, but they are built differently, and the difference is right on the surface. ¿Cómo…
- 📐Pedir or preguntar: to ask for or to ask aboutEnglish 'ask' looks in both directions at once: you ask the way and you ask for the bill — one word, two different…
- 📐Prestar or pedir prestado: to lend or to borrowEnglish already keeps the two roles apart — lend and borrow — and Spanish insists on the same split, only its second…
- 📐Buenas tardes or buenas noches: where the Spanish day endsThe Spanish day is cut at places English does not expect, and the greeting trips exactly there. La mañana runs until…
What is hard about Spanish and what comes for free
Hard: two verbs “to be”, the subjunctive mood, the speed of native speech.
Easy: spelled the way it sounds, a familiar alphabet, vocabulary you recognize from day one.
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”, the subjunctive mood, the speed of native speech is the main difficulty. In return, spelled the way it sounds, a familiar alphabet, vocabulary you recognize from day one.
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.