Hello, or should I say, Hola 🙂

This is the first of the Language Tales blog series, and I’m beyond happy that you’ve decided to give it a go!   At the end of the series, I’ll put together a nice ebook for you to have all the information you need all in one place.

First, we’ll get started with the technical stuff. I know, I know it might be kind of tedious, and you can always check these out in a dictionary, but it’s always good to know how the technical parts of a sentence actually work and interact together in spanish.

 

This is how a normal, simple sentence basically looks like:

Subject+Verb+Complement

In this lesson, we’ll focus majorly on the subject, with the pronouns, and their equivalents in english, as well as the verb to-be, and how it is used in spanish with the pronouns.

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Pronouns

We shall start at the beginning, with the pronouns. In spanish, we have six pronouns.

Yo

Tú

Él/Ella/Eso

Nosotros

Vostros

Ellos/Ellas

 

Let’s do a comparison between spanish and english pronouns.

 

I             ->       Yo

You        ->      Tú

He/She/It -> Él/Ella/Eso

We         ->      Nosotros

You        ->      Vosotros

They      ->      Ellos/Ellas

 

[alert type=”info” close=”false”]Note that the main differences are in the use of the second person in singular and plural. In English, ‘You’ is used for both singular and plural, while in spanish, we have different words for each one. In fact, we even make a distinction in cases where you want to be formal. Ex.:

 

Singular

You‘re very kind, Mr. Anything. In this case, ‘you’ is supposed to be formal. In spanish, we’d use the word ‘Usted‘. 

Hey, you owe me one. Don’t you forget! Here, ‘you’ is much more informal, so we use ‘Tú‘. 

 

Plural

Formal -> Vosotros (not used a lot)

Informal -> Ustedes

 

*For the purpose of these lessons, I’m going to use only the informal ‘you’. 

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[alert type=”warning” close=”false”]In fact, you have to be very careful with a lot of other words too, because spanish makes a lot more distinctions between plural and singular, and also between genres.[/alert]

[alert type=”info” close=”false”]In the third person singular, as you can see, each pronoun has its spanish equivalent, but in plural, there’s only ‘They’. In english this word might mean anything, but in spanish, we always identify it as one genre or the other, resulting in ‘Ellos‘, or ‘Ellas‘.[/alert]

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Verb to Be

Right… But so far we only have one word down from whatever sentence you want to make. Don’t worry! Here comes the verb of all verbs!

Let’s start with the english version.

I am

You are

He/She/It is

We are

You are

They are

And now, their spanish equivalents:

I am -> Yo soy

You are -> Tú eres

He/She/It is -> Él/Ella/Eso es

We are -> Nosotros somos

You are -> Ustedes son 

They are -> Ellos/Ellas son

But, remember the verb to be has two meanings. One as in ‘I am [name]’, and the other as in ‘I’m at the school’. In spanish, as usual, we can’t use the same word for those two meanings. The english verb to be is divided into Ser (see above), and Estar. 

Yo estoy

Tú Estás

Él/Ella/Eso está

Nostros estamos

Ustedes están

Ellos/Ellas están

*cough* Of course there are more tenses, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Love the present people!

It really does seem pretty easy, a matter of memorizing the translation. But the thing with spanish, the thing that makes its grammar one of the most difficult to understand, is verb conjugation. It’s a struggle, and even us native spanish speakers conjugate verbs wrong most of the time. Don’t do that, ha ha. But for now, let’s work on introductions!

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Real Stuff Time!

If you wanted to introduce yourself, you’d say,

Hi, I’m Pamela 🙂

Let’s take stock of each element of that sentence. We have the greeting, ‘Hi’, we have the pronoun, I, the verb, which happens to be the verb ‘to be’ in the form of Am, and then your name; in this case my name.

If I wanted to translate that into spanish, literally, it’d be:

Hola, yo soy Pamela 🙂

The words are exactly in the same order and the sentence is grammatically correct. Hooray!

[alert type=”info” close=”false”]A little word of advice though: In spanish, you might want to get rid of the Yo. For some reason, it’s very rare for us to use the first person pronoun unless we really want emphasis on it. So, taking the example from above, we’d have:

Hola, soy Pamela 🙂

It’s still correct, and sounds nicer. Using ‘Yo’, sounds stiff, and awkward, although, I guess it’d be alright if you’re just writing it. Remember this only applies to this pronoun and the pronoun ‘Tú’.

[/alert]

Other examples of no pronoun:

•  Soy ecuatoriana  -> I’m ecuadorian.
• Estoy feliz -> I’m happy.
• Estoy en mi casa -> I’m at my house.
• Eres la mejor -> You’re the best.

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Recapping

•  ‘You’ in spanish can be formal singular Usted, or informal, Tú. If plural, it can be Vosotros or Ustedes.
•  The verb ‘to be’ in spanish is two separate verbs, Ser, and Estar. 
• When speaking, you might want to omit the first person singular pronoun ‘Yo‘, and the pronoun ‘Tú’ as well..

 

And that’s it for now! Hope you find it useful!

Stay tuned for the next post, expanding a little on verbs and their conjugations

Now tell me something about you! (In spanish ;D)

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