Spanish vocabulary and grammar

Do you regularly communicate with Spaniards? Or do you simply think the language is beautiful? We can certainly imagine wanting to master it. This is easier said than done, because Spanish is not an easy language. To start with, you need to have an extensive Spanish vocabulary in order to express yourself. Additionally, you also need to master Spanish grammar. In order to help you achieve this, this page is all about Spanish vocabulary and grammar.

Sentence structure in Spanish

As is the case in most other languages, sentence structure is very important in Spanish. If you construct your sentences properly, you will not only be better understood, but you also prevent changing the meaning of words unintentionally. Curious to learn how to construct sentences in Spanish? Below we'll elaborate on the structure, word order, adjectives, comparisons and the main verb. After you've finished reading, you will have a much clearer idea of how sentence structure in Spanish works.

Structure

Because Spanish is a tricky language, a lot of people think that constructing sentences is difficult as well. Looking at a Spanish sentence might exacerbate this feeling. If you don't know the language, you have no idea what the words mean. Moreover, you don't even know what word classes they belong to. Despite all that, Spanish sentences don't differ all that greatly from English sentences structurally. In many cases, word order is the same or very similar. Knowing this, it’s sure to be a lot easier to create Spanish sentences yourself.

Word order

We already stated above that word order in Spanish is often the same as in English. Declarative sentences always start with the subject in Spanish. After the subject, the verb and rest of the sentence follow. Take a look at the following examples:

• English
  He speaks Spanish → subject - verb - rest of the sentence

• Spanish
  El habla español → subject - verb - rest of the sentence

This does not mean that word order is always the same between English and Spanish. Spanish is a lot more flexible than English. You can write some sentences in several different ways without changing the meaning of the sentence. The following examples should clarify this:

• Miguel trabaja en el supermercado → subject - verb - rest of the sentence.
• Trabaja Miguel en el supermercado → verb - subject - rest of the sentence.
• En el supermercado trabaja Miguel → rest of the sentence - verb - subject.

In the sentences above, the same words are used but they're put in different places in the sentence. Despite that, the meaning of all the sentences is the same, and according to Spanish grammar they are all correct. This is one of the reasons why many people think Spanish sentence structure is difficult, because sentence structure in English is far more standardised: subject - verb - rest of the sentence.

Adjective

Now that you're familiar with the basics of Spanish sentence structure, it's time to take it a step further. As in English, Spanish sentences can have adjectives. This word class modifies nouns. In English, the adjective almost always comes before a noun, whereas this is the other way around in Spanish. The sentences below illustrate this principle.

Spanish	English
la mujer hermosa	the beautiful woman
la camisa azul	the blue shirt
el chico dulce	the sweet boy

In Spanish, the adjectives don't always follow the nouns. There are a number of examples. Do you want to express your admiration of someone or something? Then you can emphasise this by putting the adjective before the noun. If the adjective itself emphasises the noun, it will always come before said noun. Finally, this also applies to adjectives that don't describe the qualities of a thing or person.

Spanish	English
una hermosa mujer	a beautiful woman
la deliciosa manzana	the delicious apple
el mejor jugador	the best player

Comparisons

When we make a comparison in Dutch, we often affix ‘-er’ or ‘-st’ to words. For example ‘I am strong’, but ‘he is stronger than me’. This happens in many languages, but not in Spanish. In order to make comparisons in Spanish, the word más (more) or menor (less) is placed before the adjective. In practice, this works as follows:

Spanish	English
más lento	slower
más fuerte	stronger
menos lento	less slow
menos fuerte	less strong

Now that you know how to construct Spanish comparisons, you can apply this knowledge in Spanish sentence structure. At first you might not know exactly what word order to use, but over time it will become increasingly clear to you. Below we will show you a few example sentences to demonstrate how to use comparisons in Spanish sentences.

• Roger es más fuerte que su hermano (Roger is stronger than his brother).
• Julia es menos lenta que Mike (Julia is less slow than Mike).

Passive voice

Whereas in English it's common to use the active voice instead of the passive voice, this is not the case in Spanish. In Spanish, the passive voice is used the most, both in written and in spoken language. There is not just one single passive voice in Spanish, however, as there are several variants. To make that a little more clear, we're elaborating on them below.

1. Ser + past participles

   This form is most similar to the English passive voice you might know. A form of the verb ‘ser’ (to be) is used along with a past participle. When the person or the object modified by the verb is mentioned, ‘por’ is added.

   →Mike fue traído por su padre (Mike was taken by his father)

2. Se

   Although the first variant of the passive voice is known to most English speakers, this isn't necessarily the case for the second variant. This one doesn't have an equivalent in English. Spaniards use the passive voice with ‘se’ in order to make generalisations. In this variant, the verb is always conjugated in the third person singular or plural.

   →No se permiten los perros en el hotel (Dogs are not allowed in the hotel).

3. Hay que

   This variant also doesn't exist in English, but it is used a lot in Spanish. The translation of ‘hay que’ is a general ‘one has to’ or ‘people have to’. This is always followed by the infinitive of a verb. In practice, this works as follows.

   →Hay que estudiar para sacar buenas notas (One has to study in order to get good marks).

Passive voice

Just like Dutch, English, French and German, Spanish also features word classes. If you want to express yourself verbally or in writing in this language, it is imperative that you know these. This will make constructing Spanish sentences a lot easier. Curious as to which word classes exist in Spanish and which words belong to which classes? We've listed the most important Spanish word classes below, along with an explanation.

Articles

In English it is easy to determine what article to use for a noun, but this is harder in Spanish. This is partly because masculine nouns get a different article than feminine nouns. Whether a noun is singular or plural makes a difference as well. Spanish makes a distinction between definite and indefinite articles, like English does. We've elaborated on the articles used in Spanish below, and provided some examples.

Definite articles

The word ‘the’ is a definite article. It refers to a specific object.

Indefinite articles

The words ‘a’ and ‘an’ are indefinite articles. They do not refer to a specific object, but to something in general.

Nouns

In Spanish, nouns are used to define people, places and things. An important difference between English and Spanish nouns is the fact that Spanish nouns can have a masculine or feminine gender. This is a feature that English does not have.

To determine whether a Spanish noun is masculine or feminine, you can look at the word itself or the conjugated form. For example, ‘boy’ and ‘dog’ are examples of masculine nouns whereas ‘girl’ and ‘bitch’ are always feminine. The article preceding the word also clues you in on what gender a noun is. ‘El’, ‘los’, ‘un’ and ‘unos’ are articles that go with masculine nouns. If a noun is preceded by ‘la’, ‘las’, ‘una’ or ‘unas’, it's a feminine noun instead.

Not sure whether a noun in Spanish is masculine or feminine? Look at the word ending. For example, feminine nouns often end in ‘-a’, ‘-ción’, ‘-sion’, ‘-ad’ or ‘-ez’. Does a noun end in ‘-o’, ‘-ma’ or a random consonant? Then it's usually a masculine noun.

Pronouns

Pronouns refer to persons, animals or things without mentioning them by name. They often take the place of a noun. This results in a sentence being much shorter, which means it takes less time to write or pronounce. Spanish makes a distinction between personal pronouns, direct object pronouns and indirect object pronouns. We will explain each of these word classes in more detail.

Personal pronouns

Like English, Spanish has many different personal pronouns. Before we go into greater detail about this word class, we'll list them all first.

• I: yo
• you: tú
• he/she: él, ella
• we: nosotros, nosotras
• you (plural): vosotros, vosotras
• they: ellos, ellas

In Dutch, personal pronouns are used to prevent confusion. This is primarily because the plural form of a lot of verbs is the same: we walk, you walk, they walk. This isn’t the case in Spanish, because this language has a unique conjugation for each pronoun As a result, the personal pronouns in Spanish are often not needed, resulting in them being omitted most of the time.

The phrase ‘we're going to the beach’ literally translates to ‘nosotros vamos a la playa’ in Spanish. Because this isn't about a specific person, the personal pronoun (nosotros) is omitted. This is why Spaniards often just say ‘vamos a la playa’.

Direct object pronouns

Spaniards use the direct object pronoun to replace a noun or a name. These are the direct object pronouns that exist in Spanish.

• me: me
• you: te
• him/her: lo/la
• us: nos
• you (plural): os
• them: los/las

Indirect object pronouns

Finally, the Spanish language also has indirect object pronouns. This is the person or object an action is being (or has been) done for. Below you can see which words are part of this group of pronouns.

• to me: me
• to you: te
• to him, to her, to it: le
• to us: nos
• to you (plural): os
• to them: les

In the English phrase ‘Rafael gives him a hand’, ‘him’ is the indirect object. If you translate this phrase into Spanish literally, you will likely end up with something like ‘Rafael de la mano a él’. However, this is not a common phrase in Spanish, because instead of writing ‘a él’ (to him), they instead use the indirect object pronoun ‘le’. So the correct Spanish translation would be: ‘Rafael le da la mano’.

Verbs

Do you want to learn Spanish? Then it's vital that you know the different word classes. And that's not all, because it's good to know how to conjugate the most commonly used Spanish verbs. Don't underestimate this, because conjugating Spanish words is not an easy task. The main reason is that verbs change for every person and every tense. We'll illustrate this difference based on the verb ‘to eat’ (comer) in the present tense.

As you can see in the above table, ‘to eat’ is simply conjugated as ‘eat’ or ‘eats’ in English. In Spanish, it takes on a different form for every person. Because this is the case for every single Spanish verb, it can take quite a bit of time to master all the different verb conjugations.

Are you struggling to conjugate verbs? Then look at the word ending. Almost all Spanish verbs end in ‘-ar’, ‘-er’, or ‘-ir’. When it comes to regular verbs, they are conjugated the same way as all other regular verbs with the same ending. The stem - the part of the verb minus ‘-ar’, ‘-er’, or ‘-ir’ - always stays the same, with the ending depending on the person.

In the above section we've limited ourselves to regular verbs, but the Spanish language is home to a number of irregular verbs as well. Because these verbs aren't conjugated based on a standard pattern, you can only learn them by rote memorisation. Examples of irregular verbs in Spanish include:

• dar
• estar
• ser
• ir
• valer
• poner
• venir
• haber
• poder
• saber

Adjectives

Earlier on this page we said that adjectives in Spanish often go after the noun in question. This is not the only difference between Spanish and English, because adjectives have to agree with the noun in both number (singular or plural) and gender (masculine or feminine). For example, the translation of ‘a handsome man’ is ‘un hombre guapo’, whereas the translation of ‘a handsome woman’ is ‘una mujer guapa’.

The Spanish language there are four types of adjectives. We'll list all four of them below along with some examples.

1. Regular adjectives
   Ending in ‘-o’, ‘-a’, ‘-os’ or ‘-as’. Examples include: viejo (old), blanco (white) and corto (short).
2. Adjectives with multiple forms
   Ending in ‘-e’, ‘-ista’ or a consonant in the singular. The masculine and feminine version are the same, but the number (singular or plural) changes. Want to change an adjective from the singular to the plural? Then add an '-s’ if the word ends with an unstressed consonant and add ‘-es’ if the word ends in a vowel or ‘-i’, ‘-ú’. Examples include: inteligente/inteligentes and fácil/fáciles.
3. Adjectives with a feminine form
   Some adjectives have a special feminine form in Spanish. This is the case with adjectives that describe a nationality where the feminine form ends in a consonant in the singular. These adjectives end in ‘-a’ or ‘-as’. This also applies to all adjectives that end in ‘-dor’. Examples include: española (Spanish), franceses (French) and trabajadores (hard worker).
4. Adjectives with a shortened form
   In Spanish, there are a number of adjectives that function the same as the indefinite article ‘un’. If they don't precede a masculine noun, these adjectives take on a special form. Examples are: primera, buenos and algunas.

Adverbs

The function of adverbs in Spanish is the same as in English. This word class says something about how, when and/or where the specified action in a phrase takes place. Many Spanish words end in ‘-mente’, like ‘lentamente’, ‘felizmente’ and ‘rapidamente’. Still, there are adverbs that are different, such as ‘ahora’, ‘bien’ and ‘poco’. If you want to remember the latter few, you must simply memorise them. The reason is that they have some specific rules.

As in other languages, Spanish differentiates between different types of adverbs. Spanish adverbs can be subcategorised into the following five categories:

1. Adverbs of manner

Example: conduce mal (she drives poorly)

2. Adverbs of degree

Example: está muy feliz (he is very happy)

3. Adverbs of affirmation

Example: evidentemente te quiere (she obviously loves you)

4. Adverbs of time

Example: mañana iremos a la playa (tomorrow we're going to the beach)

5. Adverbs of place

Example: te veré alli (I'll see you there)

Superlatives

Spanish actually has two types of superlatives. Namely relative superlatives and absolute superlatives. The first category includes words that compare a noun to a larger group. Absolute superlatives, by contrast, don't compare a noun to a greater whole. The examples below should clarify this

Relative: es el estudiante más inteligente de la clase → he is the smartest boy in the class.
Absolute: es muy grande → he is very big

Prepositions

Prepositions are used to connect various parts of a sentence. This isn't just the case in English, but it applies to Spanish as well. In this language, not all prepositions are used equally often. Curious about what the most commonly used Spanish prepositions are? We've made a list for your convenience.

• a - to, at, in
• ante - in front
• bajo - below
• con - with
• contra - against
• de - from, with
• desde - from, since
• durante - during
• en - in, on, to
• entre - between, among
• excepto - except
• hacia - to, against
• hasta - until, even
• para - for, to, in order to
• por - for, with, by, per
• según - according to
• sin - without, none
• sobre - on, about
• tras - behind

Conjunctions

In order to connect words and phraes, Spaniards use conjunctions. Do you want to improve your Spanish pronunciation or learn to express yourself better in Spanish? Then it's important that you know the Spanish conjunctions. We've listed the most important ones for you.

• que - that, than
• y - and
• o - or
• como - (such) as
• si - if, whether
• pero - but
• porque - because
• cuando - when
• donde - where
• aunque - in spite of, although
• sino - but (rather)
• sin embargo - however, in contrast
• por lo tanto - therefore
• así que - so that
• osea - in other words

Past participles

The last word class we'll talk about is the past participle. This word class appears in a lot of Spanish sentences, similar to how it works in English. The way in which a Spanish past participle is formed depends on the ending of a verb. The past participle for regular verbs ending in ‘-ar’ is formed by adding ‘-ado’ to the stem. For regular erbs ending in ‘-er’ or ‘-ir’, the past participle is formed by adding ‘-ido’ to the stem.

In addition to regular verbs, Spanish has irregular verbs as well. The above rules do not apply to these verbs, which can make it difficult to know how to form the past participle. There are no fixed rules for the past participles of irregular Spanish verbs. In order to use them correctly, you simply need to learn them by heart. In the table below we'll list a few examples of the past participles of irregular Spanish verbs.

Spanish conjunctive, subjuntivo

In English the subjunctive is hardly used anymore, but it's very common in Spanish. Spaniards mainly use the subjuntivo for impersonal statements and emotions, opinions and convictions. The conjunctive is always used in adverbial phrases that start with ‘que’ or ‘si’. In order to determine the correct form of the subjuntivo, you need to look at the tense of the verb in the main clause and how it relates time wise to the conjunctive. Because we'd love to help you learn Spanish, we will show you below how to determine the correct form of the conjunctive in the present tense, present perfect, simple past and past perfect.

Present tense

If the verb of the main clause is in the present tense, future tense, present perfect or the imperative, and does the conjunctive verb refer to an action that occurred simultaneously or after the action of the verb in the main clause? Then you use the present tense. To form the conjunctive in the present tense, take the I-form (yo) of the verb. Then take away the ‘-o’ and add the corresponding ending from the table below.

Present perfect

Is the verb in the main clause in the present tense, future tense, present perfect or imperative and does the conjunctive verb refer to an action that has already take place? Then you use the present perfect. In that case the word ‘haber’ (to have) is combined with the past participle of the verb in the main clause. In the table below we will demonstrate it with the past participle of the verb ‘estudiar’ (to study): ‘estudiado’.

Simple past

For the simple past tense of the conjunctive, you first need to conjugate the verb in the third person plural (past). This results in a verb ending in ‘-ron’. Remove this ending and add the ending of the conjunctive in the simple past. As we'll show in the table below, you can use two different endings for each ‘person’. Both are correct, so it doesn't matter which one you choose.

Past perfect

If the verb of the main clause is in the simple past or the past tense, and the conjunctive verb refers to an action that took place before the action of the verb in the main clause? Then you need to use the past perfect tense of the conjunctive. As with the present perfect, this tense also uses a form of the verb ‘haber’ (to have), combined with the past participle of the verb in the main clause. Here, as with the conjunctive in the simple past, you have two options. Take a look at the following table. For simplicity's sake, we once again use the past participle of ‘estudiar’ (to study): ‘estudiado’.

Spanish verb tenses

As in any other language, verbs in Spanish can be in different tenses. There is a distinction between the present, past and future tense. In addition, the Spaniards also have the conditional. Despite the fact that most of these tenses also exist in English, conjugating verbs in Spanish is quite a different beast. We're going to take a deep dive into the previously mentioned tenses. We hope this helps you conjugate them correctly in Spanish.

Present tense

When you want to describe something that's going to happen in the near future, you use the present tense (presente). This is the case in both English and Spanish. There is one major difference, however. In English you have multiple ways of expressing something is happening right now, but in Spanish there's only one. For example, you could say ‘I eat’ and ‘I am eating’, but in Spanish you would only ever use ‘yo como’ (I eat).

Earlier on in the article we already mentioned the fact that almost all Spanish verbs end in ‘-ar’, ‘-er’ or ‘-ir’. Do you want to conjugate regular Spanish verbs? Then you can use the table below to determine what ending the stem (I-form) gets.

Please note: you can only use the above table when conjugating regular Spanish verbs. It won't be of any use if you're dealing with irregular verbs. Irregular verbs don't have a fixed pattern, meaning you simply have to learn the conjugations by heart.

Past tense

The present tense of Spanish verbs isn't particularly challenging, especially when it comes to the regular verbs. Unfortunately, the past tense is a different story. This is partly because they use two different types of past tense in Spain: the pretérito indefinido (past tense) and the pretérito imperfecto (simple past). Below we will explain how to conjugate Spanish verbs in both forms.

Pretérito indefinido (past tense)

You use the pretérito indefinido in order to describe something that once happened, or something that's happened a few times but ended at a specific moment. ‘Viví en Barcelona’ (I lived in Barcelona) and ‘Solía acampar todos los veranos cuando era niño’ (as a kid I went camping every summer) are examples of sentences in this tense.

Do you want to conjugate a regular Spanish verb in the past tense, but you don't know what ending to use? Then take a look at the table below. We've organised the verbs ending in ‘-ar’, ‘-er’ and ‘-ir’.

Pretérito imperfecto (simple past)

In order to describe usual or repeated actions in the past, situations from the past, actions that take place in an undetermined timeframe, times or ages in the past, as well as people and places, you use the simple past. In Spanish this tense is also known as pretérito imperfecto. Below are a few examples of sentences in this tense:

• Mi abuelo me mandó muchas tarjetas (my grandfather sent me many cards)
• Aquí solía haber dos árboles (there used to be two trees here)
• Él tenía 25 años (he was 25 years old)

In order to conjugate regular verbs in the simple past (pretérito imperfecto), it's good to know how to do this yourself. In the table below we're listed the various endings for verbs ending in ‘-ar’, ‘-er’ and ‘-ir’.

Future tense

When Spaniards refer to something that hasn't happened yet, they use the future tense (futuro). Similarly to English, they use an auxiliary verb ‘shall’. In terms of conjugation, the future tense is one of the easiest. This is because Spanish verbs ending in ‘-ar’, ‘-er’ and ‘-ir’ all get the same endings for the different ‘persons’. Additionally, you do not need to repeat part of the main verb (infinitive), because you simply add the relevant ending.

Curious to see what that looks like in practice? Then take a look at the table below. Here you will not only see the different endings in the future tense, but we've applied the future tense to the verbs ‘hablar’ (to speak), ‘beber’ (to drink) and ‘pedir’ (to ask).

Spanish regular verbs are conjugated in the manner listed above, but you need a different approach for irregular verbs. Want to know how to conjugate Spanish irregular verbs? Then make sure to study these verbs and the relevant endings. Irregular verbs in the future tense are not conjugated according to a ‘fixed’ pattern.

Conditional

The final verb tense we'll discuss is the conditional (condicional). This tense has a few things in common with the future tense, but isn't actually directly linked to the present, the past or the future. As a result, we're mentioning it separately. Spaniards use the conditional if they're talking about conditional or hypothetical events. This form is used a lot in situations where, in English, you would use ‘would’.

Just like the present tense, past tense and future tense, the conditional has its own conjugations. Thankfully, conjugating these forms is relatively straightforward, because the regular verbs all get the same exact ending. You simply put them at the end of the infinitive, just like with the future tense. The table below shows you how to conjugate Spanish verbs in the conditional. For simplicity's sake, we'll use the same verbs as in the future tense: ‘hablar’, ‘beber’ and ‘pedir’.

Do you want to conjugate an irregular verb in the conditional? Then the above rules do not apply completely. These rules only apply to regular verbs. For irregular verbs, you can use the same endings as for regular verbs, but they don't follow the infinitive. Because the part of the verb you need to use for irregular verb differs for every word in question, you simply have to memorise them. This is the only way to know how to conjugate them in the conditional.

Learning Spanish grammar

Knowledge of Spanish vocabulary and grammar is absolutely essential in order to be able to communicate with Spaniards. When it comes to vocabulary, rote memorisation is usually the way to go. You will pick up on the meaning of many different Spanish words, which gradually improves your proficiency in the language. But knowing words isn't enough to make yourself understood in Spanish. You absolutely have to learn Spanish grammar as well. Not putting in the required effort? Then a Spaniard may not understand what you're trying to say when you talk to them or send them a message.

Spanish pronunciation

Because the Spanish alphabet is basically the same as in English, you might think the letters are pronounced the same way as well. This is not the case, however, as some letters are pronounced very differently. The ‘j’ in Spanish sounds similar to an ‘h’ in English for example, and the ‘v’ sounds like a ‘b’. Additionally, Spaniard don't pronounce the letter ‘h’ at all. It's silent. This is reason enough to focus on Spanish pronunciation when you're communicating with Spaniards. Doing so will prevent any misunderstandings from arising. In order to help you master Spanish pronunciation, Translation Agency Perfect has dedicated and entire page to this topic. Use it to your advantage.

Spanish pronunciation →

Masculine and feminine

As is the case in many languages, Spanish makes a distinction between masculine (masculino) and feminine (femenino) words. There are many different ways to determine the gender of a word. The article can clue you in on whether a word is masculine or feminine. ‘El’, ‘los’, ‘un’ and ‘unos’ are masculine articles, whereas ‘la’, ‘las’, ‘una’ or ‘unas’ are feminine articles.

There are also words where you can inherently see whether they're masculine or feminine. You can look at the ending of a noun in order to determine their gender. Most Spanish words ending in ’-o’ are masculine, a few exceptions notwithstanding. Additionally, ‘-or’, '-aje’, ‘-ismo’ and ‘-m(i)ento’ are all examples of masculine endings. If a Spanish word ends in ‘-a’, it is usually a feminine word. Take note, however, that there are exceptions to this. In addition, most words ending in ‘-dad’, ‘-ción’, ‘-sión’, ‘-tud’, or ‘-ez’ are feminine.

While some languages also have a neuter gender, Spanish does not. Spanish nouns are always either masculine or feminine. And words that might be considered neuter gender are expressed using the masculine forms. Are masculine and feminine words in the plural mentioned together? Then you need to use the masculine form by default. For example, ‘los padres’ is the correct translation of ‘the parents’.

Question markers

Whenever you see a Spanish question, you will immediately notice it's a little different than how we write questions in English. In Spanish, the question mark doesn't only appear at the end of a sentence, but at the start of it as well. The question mark at the start is inverted (¿).

In contrast with written Spanish, in spoken Spanish this doesn't come into play. This is why intonation is important. This is the only whay for someone to hear whether you're asking a question or not. For example, look at ‘Estás bien’ and ‘¿Estás bien?’. In the first example, you're saying ‘it's okay’ whereas in the second example it's more like ‘are you okay?’.

In order to be able to ask questions in Spanish, you need to know the question markers. If you've only recently begun learning the language, you probably don't know these yet. This is why we've listed the most used Spanish question markers for you.

Singular and plural

Like many other languages, Spanish makes a distinction between singular and plural. If you want to learn Spanish, you need to learn about the difference. Fortunately, this isn't especially difficult since the plural mostly revolves around adding ‘-s’ or '-es’ to nouns. You use ‘-s’ if the word ends in a vowel and you add ‘-es’ to nouns that end in a consonant. Do note: there are a few exceptions to this rule.

If you think only the ending changes if you change a word from singular to plural, you are mistaken. The article changes too. To illustrate the difference between the singular and plural in Spanish, we've listed a few examples below.

Por and para

If you want to say ‘for’ in Spanish, you have to choose between ‘por’ and ‘para’. You can't just pick and choose whichever one you want, though. Although ‘por’ and ‘para’ are usually translated with ‘for’, this isn't always the case. Oversimplified, ‘por’ signifies a cause and ‘para’ signifies a goal. When you use ‘por’, you're generally saying you're going through something, whereas ‘para’ is about saying you're going somewhere. Below we'll illustrate the difference between ‘por’ and ‘para’ with a few examples.

Por

Para

Ser, estar and hay

Just like the English word ‘for’, ‘to be’ can be translated in different ways in Spanish. You have ‘ser’, ‘estar’ and ‘hay’. As before, you cannot just pick and choose, because there are rules. In many cases, you can use the following guidelines to determine which of the three words to use.

Ser = to be + characteristic (long-term or permanent)

Estar = to be + condition (temporary or at a specific time)

Hay = when the topic is undetermined

Tener que, hay que and deber

When it comes to Spanish, many people run into issues when it comes to ‘tener que’, ‘hay que’ and ‘deber’. You can translate all them as ‘must’, but they do differ in meaning slightly. Below we'll explain each variant in greater detail, along with some examples.

Tener que

This is the variant you use when something is mandatory. This applies to external obligations or when someone tells you to do something.

Hay que

Spaniards use ‘hay que’ to signify that something is mandatory in general. This is commonly used in general statements.

Deber

‘Deber’ is mostly used when something is owed or when talking about a reasonable obligation.

Negations

If you want to master the Spanish language, you need to know how negations work. In many cases, the word ‘no’ is used to indicate a negation, but there are more options. In the following table you will find some of the most common ones, as well as their English translation.

It's important to keep in mind that the Spanish language makes a distinction between single and double negations. For single negations you simply put the word ‘no’ in front of the conjugated verb. I compound sentences, the negation comes before the auxiliary verb. Moreover, ‘no’ always comes before the pronoun. For double negations there is an additional negative statement next to the word ‘no’. ‘No veo nada’ (I don't see anything) is an example of a double negation. ‘No’ and ‘nada’ are both negations.