Talk:Spanish grammar

See history before 4 July 2004 at Spanish language

Talk up to 14 June 2005: archived at /Archive1.

Rules of the RAE, and cleft sentences

User:Hdezela mentioned "unused rules" of the RAE regarding inverted question and exclamation marks and accents on uppercase letters. I've reverted those edits since I think they were not accurate and would anyway need some source (besides anecdotic personal experience).

• It is true that many people today leave out the so-called inverted marks, but that's mostly in email and cell phone text messages; nobody's leaving them out in other forms of writing (newspapers, TV news, TV ads, CVs, books, pamphlets, etc.). When children leave them out, they're still corrected by the teachers, so the rule is not "unused".
• It is also true that many people leave out the accents on uppercase letters (and not only in all-uppercase words). In my experience, people often claim they thought it was correct to do so or even that there was a rule dictating it. But that again is my personal experience.

The other thing is the form of the cleft construction. In my dialect at least, nobody uses quien as a relative pronoun except in formal speech, and then they consistently use quien instead of el/la que regardless of the purpose of the sentence (informative or responsive). The only thing that may change is the order of the clauses: "Fue Juan el que perdió las llaves" vs. "El que perdió las llaves fue Juan", also vs. simply "Las llaves las perdió Juan". --Pablo D. Flores 15:20, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

La que lo se...

Examples La que lo sé soy yo and Yo fui el que me lo bebí seam to be terribly wrong to me, I've never heard it before. I believe that in singular the subordinate clause never matches the person (second examples).

Also, Es por eso por lo que lo hice is labeled among correct expresion, which might be, but Es por eso que lo hice as uneducated speech; call me uneducated, by I would defenitelly never use the first, and always use the second! Mariano(t/c) 07:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The first examples do look rather wrong, but I have heard them. I'm not sure if they're prescriptively wrong. As for the others, Es por eso por lo que lo hice is correct but awfully long and affected; I've never heard it, or even seen it in print. Es por eso que lo hice is definitely not uneducated; que has been long used as an all-purpose relative pronoun. In any case, most people I know would use Por eso lo hice, with emphasis on por eso, to convey the same idea. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 11:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Realise that you are talking about spoken language where sentences tend to be longer and more redundant. Short and precise sentences are not unneducated as Mariano suggests. What make the speech sound 'educated' is the consistency in style, and the good use of the grammar. I would say the first sentence is wrong because "La que sabe" is actually in third person (singular), and the verb was conjugated in the first person "(yo) sé". The second sentence is wrong for similar reasons, confusion of first and third person. I would re-write those sentences as follows:

1. La que lo sabe soy yo
2. You fui el que se lo bebió

--tequendamia 12:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Conjunctions

Could someone please add a section or paragraphs about conjunctions? I know there are at least a couple forms of y, depending on what follows, though I don't speak Spanish. --LakeHMM 04:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll add it in when I have the time. Jorge Padrón 03:54, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I added a small subsection in the "Miscellaneous" section concerning just y and o. I figure that for the moment only those idiosyncratic conjuctions need be mentioned. Unless I am missing something, I believe those are the only ones that actually change forms; and I am a native speaker (though I can be wrong). If anything, a short list can be added later of other generally-used conjunctions, like the preposition section.

Jorge Padrón 04:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

There are only two conjunctions in Spanish: a + el -> al; de + el -> del. Diego Argueta 9:24, 15 Octiber 2007 (UTC)

Those are contractions, not conjunctions. Spanish has a number of conjunctions, including y , o , pero, sino, que, como, pues, among others. Only y and o have alternate forms. Nohat 22:21, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

External Links Consistency

hey guys, I tried adding a site a while back and it kept on getting deleted. I was told by the remover that I should bring it up here. So I have. I think there are sites that are less useful to users than the one I added, so if you want to remove it (www.jiffyspanish.com) please take it up with me here first, so I don't just re-add it again. Cheers, Lumpeseckel 01:20, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The link is http://www.jiffyspanish.com/grammar. Please don't add it until it's decide on its usefulness.--Mariano(t/c) 17:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

That's fine, but I still don't understand who decides? If I think it's useful and you don't how do we decide whether it stays or goes? And what about the other links, if I think they aren't useful, should I just go and delete them? Some consistency is needed here. Lumpeseckel 03:25, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I personally think the proposed link doesn't provide any encyclopedic information to the reader other than the already present in Wikipedia, and thus would say not to include it. After all, Wikipedia is not a link source to tutorials. Even if the site contains valid information on the subject, it is still a commercial site, trying to sell you its product.

Who decides? I was expecting more feedback from the people attending this article. --Mariano(t/c) 12:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

That's fine Mariano, but even looking at some of the other sites linked to in Spanish Grammar, they often have products for sale. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I am still confused about who has the right to do this or that. I would appreciate if you could just leave my links until a consensus is reached. Cheers Lumpeseckel 04:39, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Again, I was expecting comments from other users as well. You may add the link if you wish. --Mariano(t/c) 11:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Verifying coger

I've found coger in the REAL ACADEMIA ESPAÑOLA dictionary [1]. It verifies that the vulgar use of coger but says its use is just American. But I'm unable to link to it. The site seems as reliable as online sources can be. --41.245.12.244 21:38, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Since the Americas have 90% of the Spanish speaking population, saying that a Spanish usage is just American is like saying that a something is done by just people under 63. On the other side, coger has the vulgar meaning mainly in Mexico and Argentina. In that case the word just could be used. Pablo.cl (talk) 21:04, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Coger

I don't think that it is the best to have the word "fuck" on this page. Imagine if a person wanted to look up Spanish on wikipedia and saw "fuck", not so good huh? I suggest moving the part about coger to a Spanish vulgarity page if it does mean "to fuck". GlassDesk (talk) 15:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Dialect variations

The dialect variations section, while interesting, is a bit... sparse. Might someone who is an expert on the subject go a little more in depth on the grammatical gender section and beyond? Thanks! 66.68.154.201 (talk) 23:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Too short

This article seems to be too short given the importance of Spanish language in the world. Compare it with the length of Basque grammar, spoken by only a million people. --Againme (talk) 15:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Table Headings

Why are the headers on all the tables in Spanish? I really don't think the integrity of the information would be compromised by translating these into English, and considering that those who prefer to read such descriptions in Spanish probably use la Wikipedia Español, I see no reason not to do so. --128.84.27.98 (talk) 20:04, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Nouns

Why doesn't the article mention nouns? --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:37, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

It mentions them now. :-) --Jotamar (talk) 18:12, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Verbs

The conjugation of verbs should be more in depth, and include tables for all of the different tenses- Chakradragon (talk) 03:08, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

That is already covered in Spanish verbs and Spanish conjugation. --Jotamar (talk) 17:25, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Demonstrative pronouns

I've changed the statement about demonstrative pronouns to say they "usually" have a written accent, based on my count of data in the "Corpus del Español" at <http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/>. To locate demonstrative pronouns and omit demonstrative adjectives, I did searches for the sequence [demonstrative word] plus [object pronoun] (as in "éste le dijo"). Specifically, I counted instances of "este", "esta", "estos", and "estas" -- with and without an accent -- before "le", "lo", and "me". The frequency of accented forms ranged from 78% to 83%, which I think justifies my word "usually". Kotabatubara (talk) 21:24, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Adverbs

There is no section dedicated to adverbs, or adverbs have been left out as a part of speach in Spanish. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gabrielmontespadilla (talk • contribs) 23:13, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Vusted

In every Spanish language textbook that I have read, "ud." can also be abbreviated to "vd.". I have learned that "vd." is the abbreviation for "vusted", so my question is if anyone knows if "vusted" is a real alternative to "usted"? If so, that would be something to note in this article.70.112.242.125 (talk)VustraMerced (5 March, 2011) —Preceding undated comment added 00:21, 6 March 2011 (UTC).

No, "vusted" is definitely not an option in modern Spanish, except — according to the article on Spanish pronouns — in "isolated areas of Colombia and Venezuela". Its rarity can be demonstrated by searches in two large Spanish corpora: the Davies corpus at <http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/>, and the GoogleLabs corpus at <http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/>. In Davies, reaching from the 20th century back to the 13th, the occurrence of "vusted" is zero. According to GoogleLabs, in the 1990s "usted" outnumbers "vusted" by some 27,000 to 1 (maybe it appears in literature representing regional speech). "Vusted" does not belong in a general encyclopedia article about Spanish grammar.

To explain the spelling of "Vd." remember that in older handwriting "u" and "v" were somewhat interchangeable. In medieval manuscripts it's not unusual to find words like "vno" and "uiene".

In modern usage, the two corpora show "usted" preferred over the abbreviations "Ud." and "Vd." between 85% and 92% of the time. The abbreviations are almost always capitalized. Kotabatubara (talk) 22:14, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Bias from the Spanish of Spain

The wording of this article seems to speak from a bias towards the standard Spanish of Spain, rather than taking a more neutral point of view. Is there any reason for this? Why isn't voseo included in the tables, just like how they appear in the RAE's dictionary, instead of putting it in a separate section by the end as if it were something strange? Why is the negligible use of vosotros mentioned as something particular to Latin America, even though the vast majority of Spanish speakers lives there, rather than mentioning the use of vosotros is particular to Spain? I'll proceed to change the point of view of this article to a more neutral one in a few days if there seem to be no objections...--Serafín33 (talk) 05:48, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Paradigms for Future tense?

Why is there no section for future tense? At least the simple future. Techineer (talk) 03:32, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Check the Main articles under heading Verbs. --Jotamar (talk) 17:53, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

VSO

Isn't VSO quite common in independent clauses in Spanish? To take a very simple example from Wiktionary: Iremos Rosa, tú, y yo. Esszet (talk) 22:50, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

That particular example is ok, but don't generalize it to any sentence; I don't think it is just a case of pragmatic fronting. The original example Escribió mi amigo el libro is not a natural sentence in a conversation. The best thing to do would be to find a good source on Spanish grammar. --Jotamar (talk) 15:44, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Is this any better? Esszet (talk) 22:56, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for the late answer. In the page you link, most examples have fronting of an element that is neither V nor S nor DO. That's what I was speaking about: anything can be fronted in Spanish, and that really has little to do with typological order. I'll quote from the article Word order:

Some languages use relatively restrictive word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey important grammatical information. Others—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexibility, which can be used to encode pragmatic information such as topicalisation or focus. Most languages, however, have a preferred word order.

In other words, order typology should refer basicly to the unmarked order of a language, and if the language is flexible enough, it can have in addition a lot of different marked orders, used for a variety of pragmatic reasons. In any case sentences in Spanish beginning with a verb (and having an overt subject) are not particularly common. I'd say sentences that begin with the object are much more common. Again, the best would be to find a good source. --Jotamar (talk) 19:03, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

According the the article on word order, ‘Most nominative–accusative languages—which have a major word class of nouns and clauses that include subject and object—define constituent word order in terms of the finite verb (V) and its arguments, the subject (S), and object (O).’ Thus, the sentences in the article I linked to aren't bare VSO sentences, but they are VSO sentences nevertheless. I can still try to find a good source on Spanish grammar if you like, but it appears that something like ‘Although bare VSO is somewhat rare in declarative sentences, VSO is very common in sentences in which emphasis is placed on something other than the subject or direct object’ would be fine. Esszet (talk) 16:02, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Ok. I can see that you are interested in the subject, so, if you keep learning about it, you'll be able to refine your own editions in the future. --Jotamar (talk) 22:43, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response, but maybe…just maybe… Esszet (talk) 14:46, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Adverbs

As someone pointed out above, there's no section on adverbs in this article at all. I'd be happy to create one, but before I do that, could someone please tell me how the superlative of adverbs is formed? According to this site, most adverbs don't have a relative superlative at all (although they do have absolute superlatives), this site says that you use the definite article + más/menos + the adverb but doesn't elaborate, and on the basis of my own limited experience, I thought you used lo + más/menos + the adverb; I know you can say things like lo mejor que pueda. Is there a way to form the relative superlative for most adverbs, and if so, what is it? Esszet (talk) 22:06, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

You mean something like lo más temprano, lo más lejos ? --Jotamar (talk) 15:49, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, can you say things like that or lo más rápidamente? Esszet (talk) 16:29, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

You typically would add an adjective or adjectival clause, for example ven lo más rápidamente que puedas. --Jotamar (talk) 14:51, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Alright, one more thing: I very recently found out that -mente is dropped from all but the last adverb in series of adverbs that would each end in -mente on their own, but does that apply even if there's an adverb like despacio or temprano in the middle? Thus, is it orgullosa, despacio, y triunfantemente or orgullosamente, despacio, y triunfantemente? Esszet (talk) 01:12, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

It would be the second one, but I wouldn't recommend it, it sounds a little awkward. --Jotamar (talk) 14:39, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Overlap

At the moment, there's a great deal of overlap between Spanish determiners and the determiners section here. What should we do about it? I say we should trim down the section here as much as possible; getting rid of the determiners article and merging it with this one would probably make the section here a little too long. Esszet (talk) 17:39, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

It's ok, contents shouldn't be repeated, as long as the different pages are clearly linked, so that no reader misses what they are looking for. --Jotamar (talk) 17:49, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

le dio permiso

Hi, I'm a learner so I'm not very sure, but I think the following example may be wrong. In the example "Fue a mí a quien le dio permiso", lit. "It was to me to whom he gave permission", le is translated to he and seems to be used as a subject. According to wiktionary, [|le] is usually the indirect object (and sometimes the direct object in case of Leísmo). I couldn't find any text where le is used as a subject. Am I mistaking anything? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dz-cies (talk • contribs) 09:24, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

"Le" is used here in the normal way, as an indirect object, not as a subject. You may question why "le" and not "me"; let's say the subordinate clause is construed from the viewpoint of a hearer who didn't know the answer was "a mí". Kotabatubara (talk) 14:57, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Ah! I see. The 'he' in the literal translation is somehow misleading. So maybe a better literal translation would be "It was to me to whom was given permission"? Dz-cies (talk) 14:01, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

No, the verb "dio" here is active, with an implied specific third-person-singular subject, a previous "he" or "she" in the context. To make it passive we'd need a "se".Kotabatubara (talk) 14:36, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

You are right :p Many thanks for your illustration. Dz-cies (talk) 01:46, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Are peninsular and American Spanish "dialects"?

Because that's what the opening says. Me permito dudarlo. deisenbe (talk) 23:43, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

I've made a few small changes that hopefully fix that. --Jotamar (talk) 01:05, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Imperfect question

The followiing was in a Spanish newspaper, I don't remember where:

Los médicos no pudieron hacer nada para salvar a la víctima y a los pocos minutos moría.

I've discussed this with native speakers and they say the imperfect does not mark a long(er) action, an action in progress, but something that happened abruptly, and the imperfect is just there for contrast. The explanation of the tenses in this article does not allow for this. ~ cc

That should be dealt with in Spanish verbs, rather than here. Anyway, I think that a comprehensive explanation of all possible tense usages in Spanish is beyond what a WP page can accommodate. --Jotamar (talk) 01:13, 29 January 2021 (UTC)