Pásame, How we get this phrase

Question

Hola,

I have seen this phrase, Pásame in one of the lessons, and which was translated to pass me. I looked at the conjugation of the verb Psar and I did not find anything that look like Pása. Since the pronoun me is attached to the of verb, I assume that either the subjunctive or the imperative are used. And this lead me with my humble knowledge of Spanish to paseme, or pasame. I wonder whether the tilde over the a, is it a typing mistake?

Muchas

Answer 1

Since the pronoun me is attached to the of verb, I assume that either the subjunctive or the imperative are used. And this lead me with my humble knowledge of Spanish to paseme, or pasame.

Very impressive, moh, you are really doing your homework

You are right, it can be either páseme or pásame. It is the imperative form.

It takes an accent as the form becomes esdrújula, that is is accented on the third syllable counting from the end. I wonder if there is a word for that in English.

Muchas gracias señora. It was pretty helpful. - MOH1, Dec 18, 2011

There is a word for it but alast I don't recall. Just look up rules of accents in spanish. Also great answer this was actually what they taught us in class. - Tasear, Dec 18, 2011

3rd-to-the-last....2nd-to-the-last....next-to-the-last......the last one - 0074b507, Dec 18, 2011

wow, so there is no word, I thought so, jeje - 00494d19, Dec 18, 2011

"antepenult" is the word in English - samdie, Dec 18, 2011

Answer 2

The accent mark over the first 'a' tells you that the accent is on that particular syllable. In Spanish, almost all words are accented on the second to the last syllable (the penultimate syllable), unless there is an accent mark to tell you to accent a different syllable. This word would be pronounced incorrectly if there were no accent mark.

'Pasa' does not have an accent mark because it is already accented on the penultimate syllable. But when you add 'me' (pass it to me) the word now has three syllables. In order to keep the accent on the correct syllable (which is still 'pa') you have to add the accent mark in order to keep the stress on the 'pa' syllable. Incidentally, this is the case whenever you add the reflexive pronoun to the end of the conjugated verb or to the end of the gerund form.

There are a few exceptions to the penultimate stress rule that actually follow rules. For example, if a word ends in 'l' then you stress the last syllable. I can't remember any other rules off hand but if anyone does please post.

aguda-stress on last syllable grave or lana....stress on pentultimate syllable - 0074b507, Dec 18, 2011

unless it is a command, you do not attach a pronoun to a conjugated verb. It can be any object pronoun (reflexive, dative, accusative) - 0074b507, Dec 18, 2011