Part of speech whether it is oral or written, has several parts. You need a subject, a verb and a predicate to have a complete sentence to express a “complex” idea. When we put a sentence together, we can have several ways to do it when it come to simple sentence for a beginner speaker. The following ways are the two ways that you will learn in this section.

1. Personal pronoun + verb (conjugated) + adjective
2. Article + noun + verb + adjective

    NOMBRES / NOUNS

A noun is a word used to identify people, animals, places, things, or ideas.

In Spanish all nouns have gender; either masculine or feminine. – All nouns have a gender, which determines the gender of any adjectives or determiners that modify it.

As in English, nouns in Spanish also have a number; singular or plural.

• Because grammatical gender is fairly arbitrary, it is essential to memorize a noun’s gender along with its spelling and pronunciation.

Nouns for living things

Nouns for non-living things

Inanimate objects such as cars are categorized as either masculine or feminine (there is no neuter gender for Spanish nouns).

ARTÍCULOS / ARTICLES

There are two times of articles in Spanish.

Definite articles

PRONOMBRES PERSONALES / PERSONAL PRONOUNS

They are the subject that carries out the verb in a sentence. In Spanish, you can omit the subject pronouns because the conjugation of the verb implies who is the subject. You can use the pronoun to add emphasis.

First person

Second person

Vos- is used in Argentina instead of tú and has a completely different conjugation form.

Third person

Masculine and Feminine

Some pronouns have masculine and feminine forms. You can identify them with the ending “o” for masculine and “a” for feminine (except for “él”).

Nosotros and nosotras
Vosotros and vosotras
Ellos and ellas
Él and Ella

When the group includes only males, you will use the masculine endings.
If the group includes only females, you will use the feminine endings.
When the group is mixed, you will use masculine endings.

Usted and Tú

The use of you (tú and used) and used varies culturally between different Spanish speaking countries.

For example: In Costa Rica, people only use usted.

VERBO SER

Ser and Estar both mean “to be” in English, but both are used differently depending on what the speaker intends to address. Below you will find the different uses of each.

Verb SER (to be)

ADJETIVOS DESCRIPTIVOS/DESCRIPTIVE ADJECTIVES

A descriptive adjective is a word that modifies the noun. It has to agree in gender (feminine or masculine) and in number (singular and plural) with the noun that is modifying.

Adjectives follow the nouns that they are describing, while in English the noun follows the adjective.

As mentioned before, adjectives have to agree with the noun in gender (feminine and masculine) and in number (singular and plural). Let’s look at how the adjectives are sorted by gender;

If we look at the table above you will notice that to the adjectives that end in “-a” or “-o” in order to make them plural we just add an “s”. But what about the rest of the adjectives? If the adjective ends in a vowel, all you have to do is add an “s”. If it ends in a consonant, you add “-es”.

Singular ending in vowel:    Ella es inteligente.                      She is intelligent. 

Plural ending in vowel:        Ellas son inteligentes.                They are intelligent.

Singular ending in consonant:   El es conductor.                    He is a driver.

Plural ending in consonant:     Ellos son conductores.            They are drivers.

(Remember, if you make one word plural the rest of the sentence structure has to do so as well)