Here is a really good article about the basic structure of Spanish sentences. If you are learning Spanish this should help you a lot.
In this easy to follow article we aim to give you a guide to the basics of the Spanish language. We will simply cover the differences between English and Spanish sentence structure, in a straight forward and simple way.
Understanding Basic Spanish -Sentence Structure
Any guide to understanding basic Spanish should highlight what the main differences are in sentences construction between Spanish and English. The first thing we will do is look at a typical Spanish sentence.
Me gusta el vino espaDol.
What this means, as you may have worked out already, is;
I like Spanish wine.
The first thing to notice is that in English wine comes after Spanish, but in the Spanish vino comes before espaDol. This is because in the Spanish language the adjective (an adjective is word than can be used to describe something, in this case espaDol, meaning Spanish), always comes after the noun (a noun is basically another name for a thing, in this case vino meaning wine).
So if I like white wine, in Spanish I would say , Me gusta vino blanco. In Spanish blanco means white.
This same rule applies whether we are referring to a drink or a person.
A Spanish man.
Would translate to;
Un seDor espaDol.
There is another difference you should notice if you are going to develop an understanding of basic Spanish.In the above example we see that espaDol starts with a lower case, or small e, but in English, Spanish has a capital S, this is because any reference to a country or if using the name of the country as an adjective in English should have a capital letter at the start, but in Spanish you would only use a capital letter when using the countries name directly. Here is an example.
Soy de EspaDa.
This translates as,
I am of Spain.
Because we used EspaDa which is the name on the country it gets a capital letter. So If I say;
Soy amricano, (I am an American man). In the Spanish we have a small a, as opposed to;
Soy de Amrica, (I am of America). Because we use the word for America directly (which is called a proper noun) we use an A.
Understanding Basic Spanish -Questions
Lets look at something a little easier that will help in your understanding of basic Spanish.
In English we use the word DO and a question mark (?) to transform a statement or command into a question, an example could be;
You have a pencil. This could be something I say as I hand over a pencil or merely a statement of fact. But if I say, do you have a pencil?, then there is no doubt that I am asking a question.
So how do we know that a sentence is going to be a question if it has no DO at the start?
The Spanish language uses two question marks (?), the inverted one at the start of the sentence and the standard one at the end. Lets see how that works;
Tiene un lapiz, (tiene can mean, you have, and lapiz is pencil)
This statement becomes a question when we add and ?.
Tiene un lapiz? so if you see the question mark at the start of the sentence you know that you have to alter the tone of your voice to make it questioning.
Getting to grips with a new language can be hard, but we hope that these few tips might make understanding basic Spanish that little bit easier for you.
Author: William G Craig
Click HERE to improve your Spanish today-boost your word power right now. Ever wondered why other people seem to learn a language quicker than you? find out how! CLICK HERE Will Craig is the webmaster at http://www.howtoimproveyourspanish.com/
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But if what you want is to translate a sentence from Spanish into purposeful and correct English, you should have a basic idea of Spanish sentence structure as well as a dictionary.
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