Spanish grammar, explained simply

Free bite-size Spanish grammar lessons: articles, word order, verbs and more. Read the lesson, then practise it with spaced repetition on Langrit.

• Subject pronouns, tú vs usted (pronombres personales) A1 · The subject pronouns Spanish has more subject pronouns than English because it separates masculine and feminin
• Noun gender and articles (el, la, un, una) A1 · Every noun has a gender Every Spanish noun is either masculine or feminine, including things and ideas. The ar
• Plurals and adjective agreement (plural y concordancia) A1 · Making nouns plural Singular ends in Rule Example a vowel add s la casa → las casas, el coche → los coches a c
• Ser vs estar (two verbs for "to be") A1 · Two verbs for "to be" English has one verb "to be". Spanish splits it into ser and estar. Both are irregular i
• Present tense: regular -ar, -er, -ir verbs (presente de indicativo) A1 · Three verb groups Spanish infinitives end in ar, er or ir. To conjugate a regular verb, remove the ending to g
• Present tense: common irregular verbs (verbos irregulares) A1 · The most frequent verbs are irregular The verbs you use most often do not follow the regular pattern. Many are
• Stem-changing verbs: e→ie, o→ue, e→i (verbos con cambio vocálico) A1 · What changes In many common verbs the stressed vowel of the stem changes in the present tense. The endings sta
• Negation (la negación) A1 · No before the verb To make a sentence negative, put no directly before the conjugated verb. There is no helper
• Questions and question words (preguntas) A1 · Yes/no questions Written Spanish opens a question with ¿ and closes it with ?. The same goes for exclamations:
• Hay (there is/are) vs estar A1 · Hay: there is, there are Hay comes from the verb haber. It means both "there is" and "there are", and it never
• Possessive adjectives (adjetivos posesivos) A1 · The forms Possessive adjectives go before the noun, like "my" and "your" in English. Owner Singular noun Plura
• Numbers, dates and telling time (números, fechas y la hora) A1 · Numbers 0100 09 1019 2029 30100 0 cero 10 diez 20 veinte 30 treinta 1 uno 11 once 21 veintiuno 31 treinta y un
• Gustar and similar verbs (verbos como gustar) A1 · How gustar works Gustar does not work like "to like". It works like "to please": the thing you like is the sub
• Demonstratives: este, ese, aquel (demostrativos) A1 · Three distances English has two demonstratives, "this" and "that". Spanish has three: Distance Demonstrative P
• Basic prepositions: a, en, de, con, desde, hasta (preposiciones) A1 · The core prepositions Preposition Main uses Example a direction (to), time of day, personal a Voy a Madrid. /
• Near future: ir a + infinitive (futuro próximo) A1 · The structure The most common way to talk about the future in everyday Spanish is ir (present) + a + infinitiv
• Reflexive verbs (verbos reflexivos) A2 · What a reflexive verb is A reflexive verb has a pronoun that refers back to the subject: the person does the a
• Direct object pronouns and personal a (pronombres de objeto directo) A2 · What they replace A direct object receives the action directly: Compro el pan. (What do I buy? The bread.) To
• Indirect object pronouns and double pronouns (objeto indirecto) A2 · What an indirect object is The indirect object is the person who receives something or benefits from the actio
• The preterite (pretérito indefinido) A2 · What the preterite does The preterite (pretérito indefinido) reports an action that started and finished at a
• The imperfect (pretérito imperfecto) A2 · What the imperfect does The imperfect (pretérito imperfecto) describes the past without saying when it ended:
• Preterite vs imperfect A2 · Two past tenses, one English past English has a single simple past, so "I read" can mean a finished act or a h
• The present perfect (pretérito perfecto) A2 · Form: haber + participle The present perfect joins the present of haber with a past participle. It is the Span
• Comparatives and superlatives A2 · More, less, the same Spanish never adds an ending like English "er". It puts a word in front of the adjective.
• Present progressive (estar + gerundio) A2 · Form Estar in the present plus the gerund (gerundio) says that something is happening at this moment. Person e
• Por vs para A2 · One English word, two Spanish ones English "for" splits into por and para. A rough rule of thumb: para looks f
• Commands (imperative) A2 · Telling someone to do something Spanish uses a different form depending on who you are speaking to, and a diff
• The simple future (futuro simple) B1 · One set of endings for every verb The simple future is the easiest tense to build: take the whole infinitive a
• The conditional (condicional simple) B1 · Form The conditional uses the same stem as the future with the endings of the imperfect er / ir verbs. Every s
• The present subjunctive (presente de subjuntivo) B1 · What it is The subjunctive is not a tense but a mood. It appears in a subordinate clause after que, when the m
• Relative pronouns (que, quien, donde, lo que) B1 · Que does most of the work Que joins a clause to a noun and covers both people and things, as subject or as obj
• Imperfect subjunctive and si-clauses B2 · Building the form Take the ellos form of the preterite, remove ron, and add the endings. Because the stem come
• Passive and impersonal se B2 · Spanish avoids the English passive Where English says "Flats are sold here" or "It is said that...", Spanish n
• Reported speech (estilo indirecto) B2 · Reporting in the present When the reporting verb is in the present (dice, cuenta, explica), nothing moves. Onl