OK, so I have to admit, I never got the grasp of English Language at school, it took me 3 goes to pass my O-Level and then it was a scrape through, so I was wondering if anyone could help me with an idiots guide for the formation of sentences.

What are Verbs, Nouns, Adverbs, Adjectives and the other thingys that I never got the grasp of?

I would like to learn Spanish and I feel it would be a lot easier for me if I understood the make up of English sentences properly so that I could then break down Spainsh Words into similar groups and have a better chance of formulating sentences in Spanish.

Thanks in advance.

Hopper

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have a look hereGrammar Tutorials - framed version, it might help you to start with getting the grip of the basic english structure....

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Our own Janet and Perikles are probably best placed on the Forum to give the best answers on this.

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You're absolutely right that it helps to understand grammar to learn a new language. It makes the difference between learning single words and being able to string sentences together.

This could be a really useful thread, so I'm moving it to the Learning Spanish section to start with.

I also don't want to insult you, so don't want to make assumptions about the level you're asking this question at. So to start at the very beginning ...

Verbs: doing words, like run, talk, type. These "conjugate", so the full "conjugated" verb of "to talk" is:

I talk (1st person singular)
you talk (2nd person singular)
he/she/it talks (3rd person singular)
we talk (1st person plural)
you talk (2nd person plural)
they talk (3rd person plural)

The actual verb is "to talk", which is what is known as the Infinitive.

Nouns: called "substantives". These are things, like dog, chair, ball.

Adverbs & Adjectives: these are describing words, the difference being that adjectives describe Nouns, and Adverbs describe Verbs.

So in the sentence "I hit the red ball firmly", "hit" is the verb, "ball" is the noun, "red" describes the noun, so it's an adjective, and "firmly" describes the way in which I hit the ball, i.e. it describes the verb, so it's an adverb. Adverbs usually end in -ly.

OK so far? Or far too basic??

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Hopper

Hear good other person same as me is. My premises is that all same languages are.

Example:

The dog ate beef

John walked home

At a very basic level, all languages are the same. You have an subject, an action and you put them together with an article (Hey, any english teachers here feel free to correct me). I actuallu downloaded a load of stuff ages ago and read through it, pretty much what you're looking for mate.

I had a good friend who taught me spanish verbs and their conjugations. Later I learned names (nouns) and eventually managed to put together basic spanish... (noun) did (verb) or (noun) is doing (verb). Then you start getting into damn reflexive verns, prepositions and god knows what else but trust me, to really be bothered with all that you need to study hard.

Verbs, their conjugations and nouns were enough for me to get started and I built it up from there.

Right now I can order a beer in castellano, what more do I need...?

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Janet, I couldn't think which area to place this but I agree, this is a better place for it.

As the song says ' . . . . Its a very good place to start!'

You know, at school when I was taught French, we went through the verbs, so it was:

je travaille, tu, ille, elle, nous and vous etc but I never understood just what they were getting at, we just learnt then verbatim without understanding the real meaning behind them.

I knew Je was I, Tu was You, Ille was he, elle was she and nous was we and vous was they (I think) - is there the similar in Spanish?


Absolutely perfect, I need it simple, it didn't go in when I was 12 so its even harder for it to go in now I'm 44

Thank you.

So lets say in its absloute basic and I want to go and order a couple of beers,

Dos cerveser por favor (please ignore my spelling, it bad in English never mind Spanish ) is 2 beers please but if I wanted to say 'I would like to buy 2 beers please' what would I say and what would be the breakdown of that sentence re Nouns, Verbs etc.

As I said, I never really got the grip of this nouns/verbs etc.

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Yes, ... and No!

Yes, because like any language Spanish has "I", "me", "you", "they", words, but No, because in Spanish, you don't need them to form a verbal clause (the bit of a sentence that contains the verb, like "I hit").

This is because, in terms of what I said before, hablar is the infinitive, in English "to talk/speak". If you want to say I speak, you just need the first person singular verb part. This is because the verb conjugates, and the endings are different depending on which "person" you mean, and whether that "person" is "singular" or "plural".

So, to conjugate the verb hablar:

hablo (1st person singular)
hablas (2nd person singular)
habla (3rd person singular)
hablamos (1st person plural)
hablais (2nd person plural)
hablan (3rd person plural)

The result is that to say I speak, you don't need a word for I, because it is conveyed by the verb ending "o". It will be clear to everyone that when you say hablo, you mean "I speak". Spanish only uses pronouns (the I, me, you, he, words) for emphasis. If you wanted to emphasise that it was you speaking rather than someone else, then you would use "I", and that in Spanish is "Yo".

Immediately it gets complicated, because in English, the word "would" is a "conditional". Verbs have "moods", and the conditional is one of them. In Spanish you would be much more likely to use the mood everyone uses every day as the norm ... it's called the indicative. Instead of "I would like" (quisiera) you would therefore say "I want" (quiero). In actual fact, you would just say Dos cervezas por favor anyway!

The breakdown of the sentence, though is as follows:

I want: first person singular of the verb "to want", indicative mood ... OR
I would like: first person singular of the verb "to want", conditional mood.
to buy: verb again, this time the infinitive (for reasons that can wait , though enough to say, for now, that Spanish, like English, uses the infinitive after certain verbs, including "to want")
two: adjective, describes the noun, which is beer. If you were asking for a cold beer, then cold would be an adjective as well. There is no theoretical limit to the number of adjectives a noun can have, e.g. a red large spotted hard broken ball … all adjectives describing the ball.

EDIT: Hopper please ignore this ...

I know that quisiera is actually the imperfect subjunctive ... it's just not the right time to bring it up!

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Can I just add something about the present tense? People learning English often have a problem because English has three forms of present tense:

1) I talk ---- a general statement, not what you are doing
2) I am talking -- What is actually happening now
3) I do talk -- for emphasis, or a negative (I do not talk)

This is unusual in a language, and confusing (yes, Spanish does as well, but that's for later).

Also important to note that a verb is often expressed in more than one word in English. This is important for understanding the structure of a sentence. For example in the sentence

This time tomorrow I will have been shot

the verb actually consists of 4 words will have been shot which is a part of the verb to shoot

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Hmmm .... you wouldn't really say I would like two beers please.

You would be more likely to say, as a customer, "Give me two beers please." which is "Dame dos cervezas porfavor"

In the mainland, depending on the area, but particularly in Madrid, I have heard "Quisiera una cerveza ......." But here in the Canaries the language is much more direct, if not a little brusk.

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I have been surfin the Internet and came across a website that gives the 100 most often used verbs in Spanish and this got me thinking, so - is this correct using Janet's example?

English verb - Buy Spanish Verb - Comprar

Compro - I buy
Compras - You buy
Compra - They buy
Compramos - He/She/It buys
Comprais - You (all) buy
Compran - They all buy

And if so, are the conjugated endings of every verb the same?

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