Grammatical Jargon buster- By Simple Spanish Tips

Remember… you don’t need to know everything to get started…

What you have seen here, is a list of the essential grammatical terms.

As I mentioned earlier, not knowing these grammatical terms doesn’t mean you can’t learn Spanish or be able to speak it. However, it will mean the difference between getting by and getting it right because some words are very similar but not the same… they can even look exactly the same but be have to be used differently because they are different types of words.

In addition to this list of grammatical terms, there are more. However, you will come across these bit by bit. For now, I would focus on understanding these.

I wouldn’t suggest trying to learn what them all by heart, but instead use this list for reference when you come across new learning, so that you fully understand what you are learning about.

Bit by bit, once you are more familiar and confident in your Spanish you will know what all these mean and how to use them.

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Learning a language can be challenging, but it helps if you have some knowledge of what the grammatical terms mean. It’s not essential… otherwise people would never learn a language by simply living in a country. However, it will make it much easier and quicker if you know at least some of the essential terminology, because it allows you to make comparisons and find similarities to English.

It will also be the difference between getting by and getting it right, because some words look very similar but they are different types of words and therefore, they have to be used differently.

Read on for a simple explanation of the following:

  • Singular and plural
  • Masculine and feminine gender
  • Definite and Indefinite Articles
  • Nouns
  • Verbs
  • Reflexive and non reflexive verbs
  • Adjectives
  • Adverbs
  • Tenses
  • The subject and the object within a sentence
  • Pronouns
  • The Passive Voice

Singular and plural:

Singular is used to talk about single items/nouns.

Plural is used to talk about multiple items/nouns.

I.e.
a car / one car/ the car  (all singular)
some cars/ two cars/ the cars (all plural)

Masculine and Feminine gender:


In English, we only assign gender to people and animals (although we are a fan of calling our cars ‘he’ or ‘she’).

In Spanish, every noun (person/place/thing) is assigned a gender of either masculine or feminine.

It has nothing to do with how dainty or tough something looks (excuse the stereotype there) it is just how the genders have developed over the ages.

In Spanish:

  • Most words ending in -a/-ción/-dad/-tad/-tud are feminine.
  • Most words ending in -o are masculine.

Definite and Indefinite Articles:

Definite Article: the
A Definite Article points out something that you know definitely exists. I.e. the car/the job.

Indefinite articles: a/an/some
An Indefinite Article refers to something that may not definitely exist… I.e. a car/ a job.

Nouns


A Noun is a person, place or thing. For example Sarah/Spain/house.

A simple tip to decide if a word is a noun is that if you can say ‘a____’, ‘the_____’ or ‘some____’ then it’s a noun.

Verbs:

A verb is a doing word. For example, run/walk/love.

A simple tip is that if you can say ‘to_____‘ (i.e. to dislike/ to sleep/ to eat) then it is a verb.

Reflexive and non reflexive verbs:


A verb is reflexive if the action of the verb is reflected back onto you. I.e. I wash myself is reflexive. However ‘I wash the car’ is not reflexive because you are washing something else and not reflecting the action of washing back on yourself.

Transitive and intransitive verbs (don’t worry about this one too much as you’ll only really need to consider it on occasion):

A transitive verb is a verb that only makes sense if you are saying who you transfer the action to.

For example: ‘I adore…’

This doesn’t make sense without finishing it off with who or what you adore. Therefore, it is a transitive verb.

An intransitive verb is a verb that will make sense even if you don’t say who you transfer the action to.

For example: ‘I sang’.

You don’t have transfer the action to anything or anyone and it still makes sense. Therefore, it is intransitive.

Some verbs can be used both ways and make sense but it depends on what you are saying.

I.e
I sing. (Intransitive)
I sing a song (transitive)

Adjectives:

An adjective describes a noun (a person, place or thing). For example, big/interesting/dangerous.

Adverbs:

An adverb adds information, usually to a verb. They often end in -ly. For example, to run quickly/to walk slowly/to dance joyfully.

Tenses:

A tense is a time frame. I.e. the future/past/present tense (time frame).

A compound tenses is a structure in a time frame that involves more than one verb.

For example. I had finished.

This is in the past and it’s called the Past Perfect tense (which is a compound tense) because it has two verbshad‘ and ‘finished‘.

Thinking about sentences:

The subject:

In a sentence, the subject is the one (usually a person) that subjects someone or something to the action of the verb.

For example: John washes the car. John would be the subject because he is subjecting the car to being washed.

The object:



The object of a sentence is the person or thing that is being objected to the action of the verb.

For example, in ‘John washes the car’ the car is the object receiving the action of being washed.

Pronouns:


Pronouns are typically small words that replace an original noun (a person, place or thing). For example ‘hereplaces John‘.


There are many different types of pronouns but here are the main ones you need to understand. The others, you will likely pick up as ‘vocabulary’ as you go along and will probably never realise they are considered pronouns:


Personal pronouns (I/you/he/she/it/we/all/you all/they)

These are used instead of an actual person. For example: ‘She called the police.’ could take the place of ‘Lola called the police.’


Reflexive pronouns (myself/yourself/himself/herself/itself/ourselves/yourselves/themselves)

These are used when talking about an action you reflect back onto yourself: For example: In the sentence ‘I wash myself’, myself is the reflexive pronoun.


Object pronouns: me/you/him/her/it/us/all of you/them

These replace the nouns that were the object in the sentence.

For example: ‘John kicked the ball‘. The ball is the object of the sentence. If you say ‘John kicked it‘ then ‘it‘ would be an object pronoun.

Another example: ‘Tom kicked Danny in a football match’. You could replace the noun ‘Danny’ with the object pronoun and say ‘Tom kicked him in a football match.’

Demonstrative pronouns: This one/that one/these ones/those ones

Again these replace the noun and in this case they demonstrate (almost literally point out) who or what you are talking about. For example: Instead of saying ‘I want that ball’ you could say ‘I want that one‘ and replace the noun (ball).

The passive voice:

The passive voice is not a tense. It’s just a way of talking that the English particularly like but the Spanish tend to use less often.

When we speak in the passive voice we talk about what ‘was done‘ and we often say ‘by…’ afterwards. We focus on who received the action of the verb rather and who did it.

The alternative to the passive voice the ‘active voice‘. This focuses more on who did it and is more popular in Spanish.

I.e.

He was operated on by the doctors last Friday. (Passive)

The doctors operated on him last Friday. (Active)

That should give you some food for thought

These are just a few grammatical terms to get you started. Don’t worry about memorising them all because you’ll likely forget some anyway. Just know where to find them when you need to refresh and top up your understanding.

Did you find this useful? 

If so, please take the time to share it with friends, family and on your social media. I’d really appreciate it.

Would you like know what more Simple Spanish Tips has to offer you?

Why not visit the website, where you’ll find simple Spanish grammar explanationsinteractive grammar exercises, and vocabulary lists with practice activities.