Que and De
I get really confused about the words "que" and "de" when I see them in sentences, I feel like there are so many different meaning for them and can mean anything in the sentence. Can anyone tell me what their most common meanings are?
5 Answers
Hi, Jade, welcome to the forum.
That's a real tough question. All that I can give you are examples:
Que
El hombre que conocí ayer (The man that I met yesterday)
Es importante que me escuches (it's important that you listen to me)
Soy más rápido que tú (I'm quicker than you)
De
Soy de los Estados Unidos (I am from the U.S.)
La mesa de madera (The wood table)
La casa de Maria (Mary's house)
Both Que and De have diverse usage in Spanish. I had the same question a few months ago when I first started learning Spanish. In the most common usage:
que = that/which, it leads a clause;
de = of, from
In "Me hicieron una broma de mal justo que yo estuve con miedo"
broma de mal justo - a joke of bad just - a mean joke: de = of
que yo estuve con miedo - with which I have fear - of which I am afraid: que = which
I find the thing helped me the most to get a hang of the usage of que and de, is to read some children's books where the sentence structures are simpler.
I totally know what you mean. I recently read a post that totally confused me when it said this. "Me hicieron una broma de mal justo que yo estuve con miedo." - At this point, what is "que" supposed to represent?
Que = Who De = at
Thanks everyone has been really helpful !!
