Introduction to Spanish Grammar?
Hi I'm pretty new to Spanish and I don't know much about the Spanish grammar (as a whole). Anyone mind explaining it to me? Thanks.
2 Answers
First of all, Spanish grammar is very different from English grammar. Spanish is a very phonetic, lyrical language with pure, staccato vowels. English is a more relaxed language with a mixture of short and long vowels. In terms of words in Spanish, there are many words similar to both languages that may be recognized and have the same meaning but are pronounced differently. These words are called cognates (palabras afines). Music and música are cognates. Nouns in Spanish have gender. They are either masculine (el) or feminine (la); singular (el, la) or plural(los, las). Adjectives have to agree in gender and number to the noun they modify. This is unheard of in English but it actually makes sense and helps the speaker know more precisely what is being written or spoken. Spanish has a very structured verb system with many of the same tense as in English. Better yet, I think Spanish has some additional verb "moods" that don't exist fully in English. The verb structure works by adding certain endings or truncating certain parts of the infinivite (the unconjugated verb form; to eat) and in this way you can tell the verb tense and what person is doing or receiving the action. At times Spanish does not need a pronoun to compliment the verb because the added ending indicates the person of which is involved in the action. This is totally opposite of English since we always include the pronoun for clarification. I know this is a lot and there is much more to explain but I hope this introduction inspires you to be inquistive and want to learn more!
First of all, Spanish grammar is very different from English grammar.
I beg to differ. Your point about the relationship between pronunciation and orthography has nothing to do with grammar. The agreement of adjectives and the nouns that they modify and the gender of nouns is, indeed, well taken. Your comment about inflectional distinctions for verbs/nouns/pronouns is partly true. Historically, there were more distinctions but they have mostly disappeared (however, some remain).
On the other hand, adjectives modify nouns, and adverbs modify verbs and adjectives, verbs need to agree with their subjects, some pronouns still reflect case (possessive/nominative/objective), helping verbs are used to form progressive/compound past tenses and prepositional phrases function in much the same way.
If you seek a language that is "very different" from English you need to move out of the Indo-European family (try Swahili, Mandarin, Japanese, etc.)
