Sentence Structures

Question

I know some Spanish and English sentences are pretty exact in terms of the "order" of the words (i.e., noun, verb...), but many times the direct word order in the transalation is different. How do I kow which words come first, second, third...

Ejemplo: Primero se pone el sol, luego se pone Mercurio, y finalmente se pone Venus, el "lucero vespertino".

Traducción: First the sun sets, then Mercury sets, and finally Venus, the "evening star," sets.

The direct translation in English sounds more like "First it sets the sun, later/then it sets Mercury, and finally it sets Venus, the "evening star".

Among many others, of course, how do you know which word comes first, next, etc.?

Answer 1

In spanish, when you ask a question, it is in a different order than when you state something. Statements go in the order subject, then verb. Questions go in the order verb, then subject.

An example may be this:

Statement

La camisa es cara. (The shirt is expensive.)

Question

¿Es la camisa cara? ( Is the shirt expensive?)

Another thing that is different is that adjectives go after their subject.

Examples:

árbol alto (tall tree) camisa roja (red shirt) chica rápido (fast girl)

Hope it helped. All of it will come with time.

Answer 2

You will get used to it when you keep hearing the patterns more often, but I will try my best to explain.

Subject|Predicate

The subject contains... well... the subject. Let's take the sentence "I walked with my black dog." The subject part would be "I" and that's it.

Yo|predicate

In a simple sentence, the verb will usually come right after the subject. "(Yo) camino." I walked with my "(Yo) camino con mi." Now the difference between English and Spanish here is that the adjective will come after the direct object. "(Yo) camino con mi perro negro."

I hope that was a good example. Does this all make sense? I hope I could help.