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Grammar guides
Spanish grammar
Short explanations of how Spanish works, from sounds to the small words, each with plenty of examples.
Sounds
How the letters sound, before you say a word.
- The Spanish alphabet Spanish uses the same letters as English plus one extra, ñ. Here are the names of the letters and a note on ch, ll and rr.
- Spanish sounds Spanish is spelled almost exactly the way it sounds. Learn the five vowels and a handful of consonant rules, and you can read any word aloud.
- Stress and written accents Two simple rules tell you which syllable of a Spanish word to stress. A written accent marks the words that break those rules, and it also tells apart some short words that look the same.
The basics
Gender, nouns, articles, adjectives and verbs.
- Word order and questions Spanish sentences follow the same basic order as English, but the subject is often left out. Questions and exclamations get an extra upside-down mark at the start, and "no" simply goes before the verb.
- Gender Every Spanish noun is either masculine or feminine. The ending often tells you which, but some common words break the pattern, so it pays to learn each noun with its article.
- Nouns and plurals Spanish makes most plurals by adding -s or -es. A few spelling and accent changes come along with that, and some nouns have no plural or exist only in the plural.
- Articles Spanish articles change to match the gender and number of the noun. Learn the words for "the" and "a", the two short forms al and del, and why we say el agua.
- Adjectives Spanish adjectives change their endings to match the noun they describe, and they usually come after it. Learn how agreement works, where adjectives go, and how to make words like buenísimo and rápidamente.
- Ser and estar Spanish has two verbs for "to be". Ser describes what something is, and estar describes how or where it is right now.
- Verbs Spanish verbs change their endings to show who is doing something and when. Learn the regular endings for -ar, -er and -ir verbs in four tenses, the common stem changes, and four key irregular verbs.
- Preterite or imperfect? Spanish has two simple past tenses. The preterite tells what happened, and the imperfect describes what was going on or what used to happen.
- Gustar and friends Spanish says "I like it" by turning the sentence around, so the thing you like is the subject. Learn me gusta and me gustan, and other verbs that work the same way, like encantar, doler, faltar and importar.
- Reflexive verbs Reflexive verbs come with a small pronoun like me or se, often because the action falls back on the person doing it. Learn how llamarse and levantarse work and where the pronoun goes.
Small words
The little words that hold every sentence together.
- This, that, these, those Demonstratives point at things. Spanish has three distances (this, that, and that over there), and each word matches the noun it points at.
- Pronouns Pronouns stand in for people and things. Learn the words for I, you and they, the small object words like lo and le, and the forms used after prepositions.
- Possessives Possessives show who something belongs to. Learn the short forms that go before a noun (mi, tu, su) and the long forms that mean mine, yours and theirs.
- Prepositions Prepositions are small words like to, of, in and with. Learn the four most common ones, how a and de join with el, and the personal a.
- Por or para? Por and para can both mean "for", but they are not the same. Para looks ahead to a goal; por looks back at a cause or describes the way through.
- Question words Learn the words that start a question (what, who, where, when, how, how much, why) and why they carry a written accent.
- Here and there Spanish has more than one word for "here" and "there". Learn aquí and acá, ahí, and allí and allá, and how far away each one points.
Put the grammar to work
1000 Words Academy teaches the Spanish words you’ll use most, in order, and brings each one back just before you’d forget it.
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