Pilar Vidueira

When learning Spanish, you’ll need to be able to use all the different parts of speech to fully express yourself and develop your fluency. One big area you need to be confident with is the use of adjetivos (adjectives) which describe nouns and have a few particular rules in Spanish that make them different from how we use them in English.

Before we jump into all the rules and spelling changes, let’s have a quick look at some example sentences to see if you can spot some of the main differences.

• El gato negro está en la cocina – The black cat is in the kitchen
• Necesito una mesa nueva – I need a new table
• Los coches azules son los mejores – Blue cars are the best

Can you see anything a little unusual? Hopefully you can notice that in Spanish, the adjective comes after the noun and also that it must agree with the gender of the word it describes, as well as being singular or plural. We have some other blogs which deal with the topic of genders and all the rules regarding that, so in the rest of this post we will focus on the changes you need to make to adjectives in particular.

Once we’ve decided which adjective we want to use to describe our chosen noun, we then must look at the gender and number of the noun to ensure we use the correct adjective ending. In Spanish, adjectives often end in the letter “o” which indicates that this is the masculine singular form. Here’s a table showing you how such adjectives would change depending on whether we are using singular, plural, masculine or feminine nouns.

In the table above, you can see that for all adjectives ending in “o”, we add an “s” to make the plural and change the “o” to an “a” for the feminine form. Easy!

Apart from the “o” ending, there are also several other common adjective endings. The most important ones are adjectives which end in an “e” and those which have a final consonant. For instance,

• Verde – Green
• Marrón – Brown
• Leal – Loyal/Faithful

In these cases, there is no feminine form and the plural you simply add “s” if the adjective ends in “e”, and “es” if it ends in a consonant. This applies except when the adjective ends in “z” which then changes to “c” before you add the plural (e.g. capaz capable becomes capaces in the plural). Look at these examples,

¡Ojo! (Be careful!) as there are, as with everything when learning Spanish or any other language, there are some exceptions. For instance, the adjective hablador (talkative) does change to habladora in the feminine. Another odd one is the colour adjective naranja (orange) which doesn’t have a masculine “o” form and only changes to make the plural by adding “s”. Don’t worry too much about these yet, as you study Spanish you’ll see lots of adjectives in context which will help you understand the trickier ones.

Earlier, we just said that adjectives come after the noun in Spanish. In the vast majority of cases, that’s true but we need to look at ones which can come before the noun too. Some of these change their meaning depending on their position in the sentence, and some don’t.

• Adjectives which don’t change their meaning

Sometimes we can use an adjective both before and after noun with no change in meaning.

• • Un buen chico / Un chico bueno – A good boy
  • Una mala idea / Una idea mala – A bad idea

There are a number of these and you’ll need to read and listen to lots of Spanish to encounter all of them, but for now it’s most important to simply be aware that they exist. You may also have spotted that these types of adjectives often drop the final “o” when coming before a masculine noun.

• Adjectives which change their meaning

This is a very important group of adjectives, as using them incorrectly will completely change the idea of what you’ve just said! For instance, the adjective viejo (old) means old as in age when it comes after the noun, but old as in a long time when it comes before.

• • Una silla vieja – An old chair (it was made years ago)
  • Un viejo amigo – An old friend (we have been friends for many years)

See what we mean? You could end up calling someone old and offending them, or acknowledging that you’ve known them for a long time! Here are some other adjectives which work in a similar way.

These are but a few, and we won’t go into every single one here, but as you practise your Spanish, you’ll come across more which you can apuntar (note down) and learn.

So, there we have an introduction to how to use Spanish adjectives! Like we’ve said many times before in other blogs, the best way to learn Spanish is to practise speaking as much as possible, read and listen to whatever you can to pick up new words and structures, and to take a course with us at Hablamos to get that expert help which will ensure you become a fluent, confident speaker.

I went to the beach but it was raining by the time I arrived! Not only is that first sentence a terrible situation to end up in, but also it shows you two past tenses that we use in English – the past simple and the past continuous. In Spanish, there are also multiple past structures which we need to learn how to use correctly if we are going to speak fluently. Today we’re going to look at the pretérito (preterite – similar to past simple) and the imperfecto (imperfect – similar to the past continuous). If we wanted to talk about our beach predicament in Spanish, we’d say Fui a la playa pero estaba lloviendo cuando llegué. Let’s take a closer look at how these tenses work and when to use them.

Both of these tenses are used for past events, and we can generalise a bit by saying that the pretérito is more for a specific action which ended at a specific time and the imperfecto is for general actions without a definite time or ending. It’s also true that certain time phrases tend to be used with one of the two tenses. Before we get into all that, here’s the conjugaciones (conjugations) of verbos regulares (regular verbs) in the two tenses using the verb hablar (to speak) and comer (to eat).

Easy! Just learn those endings and you can conjugar (conjugate) all regular verbs in these two past tenses. As with everything in life, there are exceptions to these rules and many of the most common verbs are irregular. For instance, ser/estar (to be), ir (to go) and several others. But, ¡no te preocupes! (don’t worry!), if you come to do a course here at Hablamos, we will teach you all about the irregular verbs and more.

Now, let’s have a look at some of the main uses of the pretérito and the imperfecto. We think the best way to learn Spanish grammar is to see lots of examples so you can really understand how things work.

First, let’s start with the pretérito:

• Completed actions with a definite ending

Comí un plato de paella anoche – I ate a plate of paella last night
Compró un reloj la semana pasada – He/she bought a watch last week

• A sequence of individual actions in the past

Fuimos al museo, vimos unas esculturas luego volvimos a casa – We went to the museum, we saw some sculptures then we went back home
Puse la mesa y comimos todos juntos – I set the table and we all ate together

• When an action interrupts another action in the imperfect

Estaba viendo la tele cuando sonó el timbre – He/she was watching TV when the doorbell rang
Iba caminando por la calle cuando me caí al suelo – I was walking down the street when I fell over

And here are some of the main uses of the imperfecto:

• For continuous or repeated actions in the past without a clear start/end

Discutíamos constantemente por el dinero – We constantly argued about money
Carlos y sus hermanos jugaban al fútbol todos los días – Carlos and his brothers played football every single day

• For background details and information in a story/end

Hacía muy buen tiempo y estaban muy contentos – The weather was great and they were very happy
Había mucho viento y llovía todo el rato – It was very windy and it rained the whole time

• When two actions are happening at the same time/end

Mientras hablábamos en inglés, el professor escuchaba a nuestras conversaciones para ponernos una nota – While we were speaking in English, the teacher was listening to our conversations to give us a grade
Laura comía un helado mientras leía su libro favorito en la playa – Laura was eating an ice cream while she read her favourite book on the beach

• To talk about an action happening at that time when it is interrupted by another in the preterite

Estaba escuchando a mi música cuando mi madre me llamó – I was listening to my music when my mother called me
Los niños peleaban cuando su padre les gritó – The children were fighting when their father shouted at them

These are just the basics of these two important verb tenses, and you’ll have to speak and write in Spanish a lot to fully understand all the uses.

Certain time phrases are a clue as to which tense to use. Here are some examples. You can obviously change a lot of these to talk about different years, months or time periods.

And there you go – an introduction to the world of the pretérito and the imperfecto in Spanish! All it takes to be able to use these tenses correctly is practice, practice, practice. And where better place to get started speaking Spanish than by coming to join one of our face-to-face or online courses at Hablamos.

Well, if you’re learning Spanish you definitely need to know which gender to use with nouns and adjectives. This is because every noun is either masculine or feminine and this affects the words you use for the and a, as well as the spelling of the adjectives you use with them. Confused? You won’t be after you’ve read our guide!

So, first things first, let’s look at the different genders and how that affects the articles we use. There are two types of articles, el artículo definido (the definite article) and el artículo indefinido (the indefinite article). These are fancy terms for the and a/an. Look at this table and you’ll see what we mean:

Once you understand this table, then the next section will make more sense (tendrá más sentido). You really must memorise the grid above as you’ll always need to use these words when speaking and writing in Spanish.

Right, so how can we tell whether a word is masculine or feminine? We can look at some rules (reglas) that you can use to help you, but please remember that there are always exceptions and you’ll just have to learn those separately.

This is a basic rule, and works most of the time. The vast majority of words which end in “o” take a masculine article and adjective. For example:

• El médico – The doctor
• Un zapato – A shoe
• El gato negro – The black cat (which reads “the cat black”)

¡Ojo! (Be careful!) – some common words which end in “o” are actually feminine. For instance:

• La mano – The hand
• La radio – The radio

You’ll just have to learn these as you see or hear them when practising your Spanish.

Another basic idea to learn is that most words with an “a” at the end take a feminine article and adjective. Let’s see a few examples:

• La camisa – The shirt
• Una tortuga – A turtle/tortoise
• Una lata azul – A blue can

But, just like with rule 1, there are some “a” words which are masculine. These often end in “ma” or “pa”, like:

• El mapa – The map
• Un problema – A problem

Now we are getting into the realm of probably as, like I’ve said before, there are always exceptions. Here are some of examples of words which follow this rule.

• Un tumor – A tumour
• El atún – The tuna
• Un colibrí – A hummingbird
• El papel – The paper
• Un autobús – A bus

You’ve probably guessed by now that this rule, like all the others so far, also isn’t 100% infallible. However, it will help you to identify a feminine word in most cases. Words which are feminine in this category include:

• La ciudad – The city
• Una estación – A station
• La nariz – The nose

If you’ve followed the guidelines above and still got the wrong gender, you’ve found one of the many exceptions. The best way to improve your Spanish, as with any other language, is to read and listen to as much material as possible to you can pick up the exceptions in a more natural way. Then, when you practise speaking and writing Spanish, you’ll be less likely to make mistakes (cometer errores).

A final point to make is that the adjectives (adjetivos) we use to describe our nouns (sustantivos) change their spelling according to the gender and number of the nouns used. It’s quite straightforward (sencillo) – just look at the table below for how this works.

Like the other elements of gender, we do have a couple of adjectives which don’t follow these patterns. For example, naranja (orange) never takes an “o” at the end and becomes naranjas in the plural form. You’ll soon get the hang of all this once you start studying Spanish and using it on a daily basis.

There you have it! A quick guide to gender in Spanish just to help you get started understanding how nouns and adjectives work in this amazing language.

Well, in fact, in Spanish this is a very important question to ask when using the verbs ser and estar, both of which mean to be! But how can there be two verbs which mean the same thing you might be wondering? It all has to do with the specific idea you want to transmit to the person you’re speaking to, and also there are certain set expressions (frases hechas) which need either ser or estar.
In general terms, we can say that:

• Ser is used for things which are more permanent or definite
• Estar is used for states or more temporary conditions

This is only a very basic guideline to follow as we will show you some examples and you’ll see that there are some cases where something you might expect to use ser actually takes estar or vice versa. When learning Spanish it’s always best to look at lots of examples (ejemplos) to help you better understand. Also, always remember that when practising your speaking and writing that you’re going to make mistakes and that this doesn’t matter as it’s the only way to improve (mejorar).

Here are a number of situations in which you’ll need to use this verb.

Can you see how that works? All of those things are much more permanent in nature and it’s very difficult to change them. For instance, if you have blue eyes today, you’ll probably have blue eyes for the rest of your life and so you use ser to describe them.

Apart from these rules (reglas), both ser and estar are used in some set expressions as I mentioned earlier. Here are a few to get you started:

• Expressions with ser
  • Ser la oveja negra – To be the black sheep
  • Ser de provecho – To be of benefit/to be good for
  • Ser una rata – To be tight-fisted
• Expressions with estar
  • Estar hecho polvo – To be exhausted
  • Estar como una cabra – To be crazy
  • Estar hasta las narices – To be fed up

So there you have it! A quick guide to these two incredibly important verbs. If you want to speak fluent Spanish you’ll definitely need to work on being able to use both ser and estar correctly. You should try to practise speaking and writing Spanish as much as possible to make sure you learn the differences. Also, reading and listening to as much as possible in Spanish when learning the language will help you really understand.