Introduction To Spanish - Introduction Grammar

Tutorial Transcript

hi welcome to introduction to Spanish my name is Alicia and I'm joined by hi everyone I'm Lea in this lesson you'll learn the basics of Spanish grammar word order refers to the order in which words are structured to form a sentence in a given language consider the English sentence I read books if we break down the English sentence I read books we can see that the subject I is presented first followed by the verb read and then finally the object books is positioned last the basic word order for English then is subject verb object or SVO for short now let's compare that same sentence I read books in Spanish your lira libros if we break down the Spanish sentence we get the subject yo meaning I then comes the verb Leo meaning read and finally we have the object libros meaning books the word order for basic Spanish then the subject verb object or SVO for shirt as you can see the word order for sentences in Spanish is the same as that of English this means that you can essentially swap out English words for Spanish words in an English sentence to convert it to Spanish so imagine you wanted to say I ate an apple but in Spanish just swap out the words I in Spanish yo ate in Spanish is Co me an akuna and Apple is man sana all together its Yocum una Manzana so I ate an apple in Spanish is yo como una Manzana you can form nearly all basic sentences in Spanish just by following the SVO word order we just saw how easy it was to form basic sentences in Spanish and how similar it was to forming basic English sentences luckily it's actually even easier to form sentences in Spanish than it is in English that's because Spanish is much more flexible when it comes to word order compared to English let's go back to the two examples we used earlier more often than not if we wanted to say I read books and I ate an apple in Spanish we would not usually say your loyal eros yo communi man sana but instead we would just say leo libras communi man sana notice how the subject AI is omitted from the sentence this is how most Spanish sentences are constructed and spoken in real life when it's clear who or what the subject is most Spanish speakers we don't meet the subject altogether your lair libras and yucca Munim and sana would only be used if the subject is unclear or if you wanted to place a stronger emphasis on the subject as if to say I am the one who reads books or I was the one who ate the apple so most of the time we can actually express any simple action in Spanish with just two words the verb and the object in Spanish so far we've only looked at affirmative sentences in Spanish but what if you wanted to make the sentence negative well that's very easy as well all you have to do is just that know before the verb and that's it so I don't read books would be no lair libros same thing for I didn't eat an apple just add no before the verb no communi Manzana and that's all there is to it once again it's much simpler to form questions in Spanish than it is in English there's actually a variety of different methods of forming a question in Spanish let's go through some of them will seem a little strange if we ask our own self to question in Spanish so let's introduce a new subject let's go with one a very typical Spanish name so instead of I read books we now have one Brits books one Leila Bruce the simplest way we can turn that statement into a question is by just raising our intonation at the end of the sentence one lay levels meaning the salandrich books in conversation we just need to raise the intonation at the end to express that it's a question in writing however we have to include the question mark at the end just like in English but unlike English questions in Spanish are marked with an inverted question mark at the beginning of the question as well one layer libros another simple way we can turn a statement into a question is by adding a question tag at the end of a sentence one question tag in English for example is right something-something statement right it works in exactly the same way in Spanish one layer libros no wandering spooks doesn't he the final way to make a sentence in Spanish is to actually switch the verb and the subject so statements in Spanish would normally be SVO but to formulate a question it'll be VSO the verb and subject are switched lai-wan leave it us meaning thes hundred books all of these questions mean the same thing but they're not completely identical there are tiny nuances that go along with the method you use to formulate a question the first and last examples appear to have exactly the same meaning but one layer libres places a greater emphasis on one because the subject appears first in the sentence are supposed to lake one libras where the emphasis is on the verb as you can see there are many ways to form basic questions in Spanish in this lesson you learned about the word order of Spanish how to form affirmative and negative sentences about the omission of the subject and how to form questions we've covered only the very basics of Spanish grammar you're interested in learning more check out our Spanish in three minutes video series in that course we teach you useful phrases while covering the fundamentals of Spanish grammar and each lesson is only three minutes long in the next lesson we'll introduce you to the basics of Spanish writing see you in the next lesson five five