Spanish: An Essential Grammar

These are used: (i) to quantify imprecisely persons, places or things (‘some’, ‘a few’, ‘several’, ‘enough’, ‘many’), (ii) to di ...

As a pronoun it usually means ‘something’, or ‘anything’ in questions and after words such as únicoand poco: Están tramando algo ...

Spanish does not use algunoto translate ‘some’ or ‘any’ before nouns which cannot be counted: Vamos a comprar pan. We are going ...

Uno intenta ayudarles, pero no nos lo agradecen. One tries to help them, but they do not thank us for it. Mucho, poco These can ...

Notes: 1 Una poca de, used by some speakers with feminine nouns, is best avoided. 2 The forms poquísimoand muchísimostrengthen t ...

Demasiado Demasiadois an adjective or pronoun that varies in number and gender. The meaning is ‘too much’, ‘too many’: Tiene dem ...

In the above examples todoappears before the item it modifies. However, it can be moved to other positions in the sentence, stil ...

Habéis [SP] tenido toda una aventura. You’ve had a real adventure. The safest way of translating English ‘a whole/an entire’ is ...

desde el punto de vista de todos from everyone’s point of view En cuanto a sus primos, los conozco a todos. As for his cousins, ...

Cualquier libro sirve. Any book(s) will do. Se puede comprar en It can be bought in any shop. cualquier tienda. El se lleva bien ...

Solo As an adjective, solois variable for number and gender, meaning: ‘alone’ and sometimes ‘mere’: Andrea y Adela fueron solas ...

Note: The phrase y demás... is found without a definite article to close an enumer- ation: franceses, españoles y demás naciones ...

Otro Otro(variable for gender and number) is used as an adjective with the meaning ‘(an)other’ and as a pronoun meaning ‘another ...

Spanish verbs are organized into three main classes or conjugations depending on whether the infinitive form ends in -ar, -eror ...

Present indicative and present subjunctive The endings for the present subjunctive are generally predictable from the endings fo ...

Table 10.2Regular present subjunctive Person Hablar Beber Subir Singular 1 (yo) hable beba suba 2 (tú/vos) hables bebas subas 3 ...

In other words, the vowel is changed in the 1st, 2nd (excluding the vosform) and 3rd persons singular, and in the 3rd person plu ...

Other common verbs that follow this pattern include: acordarse de remember mostrar show acostarse lie down negar deny atravesar ...

The -ir conjugation There are two discernible patterns of conjugation: Pattern I– In the present indicative and subjunctive, the ...

Pattern II– In the present indicative some verbs have a change from e > i whenever the stress falls on the stem, and make the ...