Modern Spanish Grammar: A Practical Guide

(lily) #1
Alguien ha mentido.
Someone has lied.
Vi a alguien en el jardín.
I saw somebody in the garden.
Nadie lo sabe.
No one knows.

No vino nadie.
Nobody came.

13.3Uno


(a)Uno means ‘(any)one’ (see also 7.1):
una de las mujeres‘one of the women’
(b)Uno is an alternative to alguno (see also 4.4 and 4.6):
¿Tienes algún problema?
Do you have a problem?

unos amigos franceses
some French friends
(c)Uno as an indefinite pronoun also corresponds to English ‘one’, ‘people’, and
similarly often includes reference to the first person. If the indefinite reference is
exclusively to females, or if the speaker is female, then the feminine form una is
used.
Uno no sabe qué hacer.
One doesn’t know what to do.
Una se siente muy amenazada andando por las calles.
A girl feels very threatened walking through the streets.

13.4Algo and nada


Tengo algo que decirte. I have something to tell you.
No vi nada de interés. I saw nothing of interest.

13.5Cualquiera


(a)Cualquiera‘any’ (pl. cualesquiera, relatively rarely used) as an adjective is
shortened to cualquier before a noun or other adjective:
cualquier día‘any day’
cualquier otro sitio‘anywhere else’
cualquier cosa‘anything’
(b) It may also follow the noun in the sense of ‘whatever’, in which case the full form is
used:

Cualquiera 13.5

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