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Spanish for Beginners: Part II Introduction In part one of this course you have seen some of the basics of the Spanish language. You have seen the verb "ser", personal pronouns, articles and gender, formal pronouns, possessive adjectives and plural nouns, regular verbs and negation and adjectives, adverbs and questions. In this second part we will expand our knowledge and go deeper into the material. Lesson 6: More pronouns In this lesson we are going to discuss pronouns, but before we do that we are going to have to make you acquainted with a weird Spanish grammar rule. Consider the two sentences:
In Spanish, you would probably expect to see the following outcome:
The first translation is perfectly correct, but the second, contrary to what you expect, is NOT! Therefore it is marked with an asterisk. The sentence is incomplete, because in Spanish you need to insert an extra preposition when you talk about people, namely the preposition "a". It is only used for people and not for objects, etc. And this so called Personal A rule only applies when the person is in the direct object. The (direct) object is the part of the sentence that is undergoing the action of the verb while the subject is the one initiating the action of the verb. Our sentence would therefore translate as:
As the asterisk shows, this is still not entirely correct. We have now applied the grammar correctly but there is a little contraction rule we need to apply. When "a" is followed by "el" it contracts to a single word "al". The final and correct translation would therefore be:
In Lesson 1, we learned about personal pronouns. We can remember the following list:
Note that all of these pronouns appear in the subject position of the sentence, although they are usually omitted:
We all know that personal pronouns have a different form when they are in the object position of the sentence. If we would simply move a personal pronoun from subject position to object position, then we would get a wrong sentence, as the following example illustrates:
Because "he" appears in object position in this case, we have to change it`s form to "him". Likewise "we" changes to "us", etc. The same principle applies to Spanish. We can construct the following table for Spanish object pronouns:
You see two possibilities separated by a comma in some instances. The first is masculine (or mixed) and the second is feminine. Our example sentence would translate as follows:
You immediately notice that the object pronoun in Spanish appears BEFORE the verb. So you get the idea: in object positions you have to use the object pronoun because otherwise you will get an ill-formed sentence, just like in English. We can distinguish another grammaticality pronouns can appear in, the so-called indirect object. An indirect object is the receiver of the action. Consider the following:
Here too you see "al hombre", involving the preposition "a", but in this case "el hombre" is the receiver and not the direct object. This is not because of the personal A rule. "a" here is simply the preposition "to", which is required in Spanish, unlike in English. A more literal translation would be:
You will note that "el hombre" is obviously the receiver in this example, and therefore it is the indirect object. Like there are direct object pronouns, which we've just seen. There are also indirect object pronouns. We can also replace "el hombre" with a pronoun here. In that case we do not need the preposition "a" (meaning "to" anymore and the pronoun will move to in front of the verb, like we saw with the direct object pronouns. We have the following table for indirect object pronouns. It is quite similar to the table for the direct object pronouns, but there are some minor differences:
And thus we can replace "el hombre" with an indirect object pronoun and move it in front of the verb, obtaining the following result:
We can even construct double pronouns now! But, where we used "le" or "les" as indirect object in constructions involving a single pronoun, we have to use "se" when we are dealing with double pronouns:
Note that the indirect object pronoun always comes first and is directly followed by the direct object pronoun. Vocabulary
Exercises
Exercise A: Translate to English:
Exercise B: Translate to Spanish: Solutions In this lesson, we will list both the official pronoun forms as well as the colloquial ones. In next lessons we will only list one of them.
Solution of Exercise A:
Solution of Exercise B: Lesson 7: Prepositions and Conjunctions We've already seen one preposition in the previous lesson, but the time has come to discuss this issue in depth, because prepositions are such a vital part of a language and it's hard to build a sentence without them. Prepositions are those little words that mark places in space or time. The prepositions are best explained by envisioning a birdcage and a bird, and the ways they relate to each other: The bird can be in the cage. ("in" being a preposition). But it can also be on top of the cage, under the cage, it can fly through the cage, or fly out of the cage. It can be stuck between two cages or it can take a nap in front of the cage. You see that there are lot more possibilities! All those bold-faced words are prepositions. Prepositions are quite abstract and therefore different languages have entirely different prepositions. There is not a simple one-to-one relation between pronouns in different languages, so they will have to be discussed separately. Possession Let us start our discussion with possession. In English we use the pronoun "of", in Spanish we use: "de".
However, when "de" is followed by the article "él" it will contract to "del" instead of "*de el".
Origin
Destination
Also, here you notice the contraction of "*a el" to "al". To be: part II We will discuss some simple prepositions specifying a location, but this can't be done yet, because first we have to cover some odd material: the Spanish language has TWO different verbs for "to be", each with their own distinct purpose. When we are going to talk about location we can no longer use the verb "ser" which we have already seen. Instead we have to use the verb "estar" which conjugates as follows (irregularly):
The main difference between the two is that "ser" is used for things that are more-or-less permanent like your name, gender, even occupation, religion etc, while "estar" is used for ever changing things such as your location and your emotional state ("I am happy"). Now we are aware of this we can continue our discussion of Spanish prepositions: Location
Movement Note that when it comes to movement, Spanish sometimes uses postpositions instead of prepositions, meaning that the word comes after the complement it applies to.
The Spanish prepositions above are more-or-less used in the same situation as their English counterparts. Company
When you use "con" with "you" there will be a contraction resulting in: "contigo":
We will soon discuss the personal pronouns that are used after prepositions. Means
Creator
Time
Pronouns after prepositions Just like we had special pronouns for direct objects and indirect objects, there also are special pronouns to be used after prepositions, those are quite similar to the subject pronouns. Take a look at the table below:
Conjunctions We have now shown you the most common prepositions. Try to practice alot with them because that's the best way to learn them. We will now move on to conjunctions. Conjunctions are the words that glue sentences together, the most obvious one we have already dealt with: "y" meaning "and". But there are far more such words which can glue sentences together in a certain way. Like we did with the prepositions, we will discuss these through examples.
Relative pronouns This now takes us to a similar issue where subordinate clauses are involved. The subordinate clause in this case is related to a part of the main clause or the main clause entirely. Take a look at the following example:
Note that while "that" in English can often be omitted, it can never be in Spanish. Every "which" or "what" that can more or less be substituted by "that which" must translate to "lo que" in Spanish. This happens when a so-called subordinate clause (the part of the sentence after "that", initiating a new embedded sentence) is in the direct object position of the sentence. Vocabulary
Exercises
Exercise A: Translate to English:
Exercise B: Translate to Spanish: Solutions We will use either the official or colloquial form of the pronouns, so multiple answer are possible.
Solution of Exercise A:
Solution of Exercise B: Lesson 8: Verb tenses Our knowledge of Spanish is already improving gradually! It is time we now move on from present tense and discuss other verb tenses as well. Spanish is, like all romance languages, rich of verb tenses. We will start with the past tense: Past tense Spanish, however, does not have a single past tense. It has two different past tenses, each to be used in their own distinct way. The two tenses are the Imperfect tense and the Preterite tense. The general difference is the following: The preterite tense is used for actions in the past that are completed while the imperfect tense is used for actions that have not ended yet or do not have a definite end. This includes habitual use. Let's first take a look at the conjugation of the Preterite tense for the three groups of regular verbs (-AR, -ER and -IR): Preterite Tense
Imperfect Tense And now let's look at the imperfect tense:
While we used translations like "We spoke", it is often also possible to translate using "We used to speak" or "We were speaking". We will now highlight some of the differences between the two tenses and teach when to use which one. A certain adverb that appear in the sentence might give a good clue about what past tense to use. Adverbs like "siempre" ("always"), "frecuentamente" ("frequently"), "a menudo" ("sometimes") all ask for an imperfect tense because of their repetitive and unspecific nature. Adverbs like "ayer" ("yesterday"), "hoy" ("today") and "entonces" ("then") all ask for a preterite tense since they point to a specific point in time that is already over completely. Also in sentences where you mention a specific begin and end-point or a duration, you would use the preterite tense, as in "I walked for three hours". Below we will quickly show how to conjugate some irregular verbs we have seen in past lessons:
Perfect Tense Like in English, Spanish has still an additional kind of past tense we haven't discussed yet: the perfect tense (which in turn comes in two different forms). Your head might be spinning right now, but don't worry about it because perfect tense in Spanish is very similar to perfect tense in English. Let's first refresh your memory by showing what perfect tense is. We will show both forms, present perfect and past perfect and illustrate this with the example verb "to speak".
You see that perfect tense is composed of a form of the verb "to have" + the so-called participle of the verb in question, in this case the participle is: "spoken", which is an irregular verb. For regular verbs, the participle looks just like the past tense, for example: "hoped". In Spanish, the same principle applies. The participle is formed by adding -ADO (for -AR verbs) or -IDO (for -ER and -IR verbs) to the present tense stem. So for our three example verbs we'd get: "hablado", "comido" and "vivido" The Spanish present perfect and past perfect is composed using the auxiliary verb "haber" (which translates as "to have") plus a participle. For our three example verbs we can construct the following scheme for the present perfect:
The past perfect tense is almost the same. The only difference is that the auxiliary verb "haber" is conjugated in the past tense (imperfect to be specific) , just like in English ("have" vs "had"). Consider the following table:
Future tense Now we've covered some quite difficult material it's time for something easy, and fortunately Spanish future tense is just that. In English future tense can made by "going to" plus the infinitive form of the verb in question (meaning the full unconjugated form). In Spanish it can be formed by using a form of the verb "ir" ("to go", the preposition "a" and the infinitive verb. This will generate phrases like:
But the more common form of creating a future tense in English is by using the auxiliary verb "will", plus the infinitive. In Spanish no auxiliary verb is needed. Consider the following table for our three groups of regular verbs, the infinitive verb acts as stem in these examples, resulting in the same conjugation pattern for all three groups:
Conditional tense Strongly related to the future tense it the conditional tense, where instead of "will", the past tense "would" is being used. In Spanish, a different but related conjugation pattern is being used as the following table illustrates:
Well, that's enough material for this lesson. We have discussed some very important aspects of Spanish grammar, not all easy or obvious. Exercises
Exercise A: Translate to English:
Exercise B: Translate to Spanish: Solutions
Solution of Exercise A:
Solution of Exercise B: Lesson 9: Reflexive Verbs, Gerund, and Degrees of Comparison In our previous lesson we have obtained a lot of information about Spanish verbs, however we have not yet found the time to discuss reflexive verbs. That we will do now. Reflexive Verbs Reflexive verbs are accompanied by a so-called reflexive pronoun, the following table illustrates the reflexive verb "to wash oneself" and the Spanish equivalent "lavarse". Note that in these infinitive verbs forms, we can already note the reflexive pronoun "-se" attached to the infinitive verb.
Gerunds In English, we are all familiar with the continuous tense, better known as the "-ing" tense. In Spanish you will find this less, but it does exist. While in English we use "to be +ing", the Spanish use "estoy +gerund". The gerund of a regular verb can be easily constructed by taking the present tense stem and adding "-ando" for -AR verbs, or "-iendo" for -ER and -IR verbs. Consider the following example:
Degrees of Comparison Adjectives and adverbs can be modified according to degrees of comparison to their meaning BIGGER or BIGGEST. In English we obtain pairs of three like: "late - later - latest". In Spanish this is always done by adding "más" ("more" or "el/la más" ("most". So "big - bigger - biggest" becomes "grande - más grande - el más grande". When used adjectively, it will look like this:
Like the last example illustrates, you can also use the opposite of "más", which is "menos", meaning "less". Now we will take a look at comparisons of inequality and later we will discuss comparisons of equality. The sentence below illustrates a comparison of inequality:
And an example of comparisons of equality:
Exercises There are no exercises anymore... Lesson 10: Filling the gaps In this lesson we will discuss some small issues we haven't gotten around yet. You will see things you might have been wanting to know all along.. Counting
Days of the week Unlike in English, the days of the week do not receive a capital first letter.
All days of the week are masculine. A preposition is often not necessary, but articles are almost always used for the days of the week:
The months of the year Like the days of the week, the months of the year are never capitalized:
The preposition used to point at a month is "en", just like in English. Imperative There is still a verb tense we have left undiscussed, the so-called imperative tense/mood. This is used to give commands. There are however different forms for the positive and negative expressions. See the table for each of the three groups of regular verbs:
We can also form this into a "Let`s ..." expression:
Correlatives Below you will see a very extensive scheme that will show you words like "somebody":
Exercises There are no exercises anymore. End Of Part TwoThis is the end of the basic Spanish course. Now you've learned some of the basics of this fascinating language. In the future we might create a part three of this course but for now this is all. But you can learn more by visiting the UniLang Public Bookmarks or by taking a look at the Basic Wordlist Spanish. Thanks for your interest in this course! If you discovered any mistakes or you just want to say something then please let us know.
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