The Everything Spanish Grammar Book: All The Rules You Need To Master Espanol (Everything®) (3 page)

FACT

Spanish Literature

During the early Middle Ages, people in different regions of Spain (as well as France and Italy) spoke various dialects like Castilian, but those who were literate wrote in classical Latin. Literacy wasn’t common—it was, for the most part, exclusive to the Catholic Church, whose clerics were educated to read the Bible and other religious writings.

Over time, however, the Spanish gradually abandoned this division between speaking and writing, and literature written in Spanish began to appear. One of the earliest known works was the epic poem
Poema del Cid
(
The Poem of El Cid
), which dates back to the twelfth century. It may have been composed orally, but eventually someone wrote it down, and some manuscripts of this work have survived to this day.

Other works of literature followed. During the early fourteenth century, a man by the name of Juan Manuel wrote a collection of morality stories, titled
Conde Lucanor
(
Count Lucanor
). Another pioneering work was
La Celestina
by Fernando Rojas, a story about a go-between (Celestina) and a love affair gone wrong.

The sixteenth century heralded the Golden Age of Spanish literature. Garcilaso de la Vega perfected the Spanish sonnet; playwrights Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón de la Barca drew much critical acclaim for their plays. In 1605, Miguel de Cervantes published the first of two parts of
Don Quijote de La Mancha,
a story of an old man from La Mancha who imagines himself to be a great knight and heads out into the world, seeking to do good and fight evil
.
To this day, many literary critics consider this great work of literature to be the first modern novel, at least in the West and possibly worldwide.

Out to the World

The unification of Spain coincided with another momentous event in Spanish history. In 1492, the explorer Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World and claimed it for the Spanish crown. Columbus explored the island of Hispaniola (now home to Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic and French-Creole Haiti), Cuba, and other Caribbean islands. Spain quickly realized the value of these new possessions and encouraged other explorers to head out to the New World. Soon, Hernando Cortés pushed on and conquered Mexico. Francisco Pizarro defeated the Incas in Peru. Hernando de Soto extended the Spanish presence to Florida. And Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca explored Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and possibly even California.

In the sixteenth century, Spain controlled Mexico, Central America (excluding Belize), most of South America (except for Brazil, Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname), much of the Caribbean, the American southwest, the Philippines, and Guam. It also had possessions in North and West Africa.

But soon, the days of glory were over. One by one, Spain began losing its colonies. In the nineteenth century, Simón Bolívar won the independence of Bolivia, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. Mexico gained its independence on September 16, 1821. The final losses came at the end of the Spanish-American War, when Spain lost the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico to the United States, and Cuba won its freedom.

The State of Affairs Today

Although Spain eventually lost its territories, the Spanish language remained in many of these lands. Today, the following twenty-one countries list Spanish as an official language (some of these countries have more than one):

• Argentina

• Bolivia

• Chile

• Colombia

• Costa Rica

• Cuba

• Dominican Republic

• Ecuador

• El Salvador

• Equatorial Guinea

• Guatemala

• Honduras

• Mexico

• Nicaragua

• Panama

• Paraguay

• Peru

• Puerto Rico

• Spain

• Uruguay

• Venezuela

In addition, Spanish still has a presence in the Philippines, Guam, and in the United States. In the U.S. alone, 35 million people are native Spanish speakers. Some of them are recent immigrants, but others are descendants of Spanish and Mexican settlers who arrived long before the Southwest belonged to the United States.

Regional Differences

Because the Spanish language has spread far and wide, there are some regional variations in how it is spoken. A Mexican will have no problem communicating with an Argentinean, but they have different accents, may use some words that are native to their own country or region, and have a slightly different way of saying “you” (Argentinians have a variant form that uses
vos
instead of
tú
as the singular informal form of “you”).

C
HAPTER
2
Grammar
Essentials

IN YOUR STUDIES OF SPANISH GRAMMAR, it might be helpful to start by getting an overview of grammar, and how it works in English as well as in Spanish. Remember, you’re not starting from scratch. You already know a lot about grammar because you can speak and write in English.

Just Like English

Despite what it might seem, Spanish and English aren’t all that different. Although English isn’t a Romance language, it was heavily influenced by one. England hadn’t been a part of the Roman Empire for long, so Latin didn’t really get a chance to spread to the local populations. However, when in 1066 French-speaking Normans invaded England and took control, their language merged with Old English, a Germanic tongue, to form what we today can recognize as English.

Moreover, during the Middle Ages and up to the twentieth century, education in Britain included the study of Latin, which might explain why English is now full of long vocabulary words like “excoriate,” “penultimate,” and “prevaricate” (or, more simply, “criticize,” “next to the last,” and “lie”).

Blueprint of a Sentence

To begin, let’s first look at the structure of the sentence and how it works, and then look at the parts of speech that may make up the sentence. Each sentence is made up of two main parts: subject and predicate. Think of the subject as the hero of the sentence. It’s the word or phrase that does the action or carries the description. The predicate is the rest—the action. Generally, but not always, the subject will come before the predicate.

Note that the subject answers the question “who or what?” and the predicate answers what the subject is or does. Take the simplest sentence, “We like it.” Who likes it?
We
do—so
we
is the subject. We do what? We
like it
—here,
like it
is the predicate. Who isn’t at home today? The girl that I had seen last Friday. The girl that I had seen last Friday is what? She isn’t at home today.

The predicate always includes a verb or verb phrase and may also include a complement. In the previous example, the predicate
like i t
is made up of the verb
like
and the complement
it
. Some verbs can stand alone, without a complement; others cannot.

Parts of Speech

Subjects and predicates can be further broken down into parts of speech. Spanish and English grammar identifies eight major elements:

Even if you can’t tell the difference between these terms, when you speak you intuitively know which are which and how they should be used. The following sections will define these parts of speech so that as you start learning Spanish grammar, these words will not intimidate you.

Name a Noun

Let’s start with nouns. A noun may be any of the following:

•
Thing:
computer, desk, pen

•
Person:
mother, John, student

•
Place:
beach, city, Spain, world

•
Concept:
truth, awareness, behavior

If you can match up a word with an article (the, a, or an), it’s definitely a noun, but not all nouns can have one: proper names like John and Spain don’t take on articles in English.

A Pro with Pronouns

The first thing to remember about pronouns is that they are replacements for nouns or noun phrases. When you keep talking about the same noun, you might get sick of constantly repeating it, so you resort to a pronoun:

John went home. He went home.

Give James a drink. Give him a drink. Give it to him.

Rita’s car is red. Her car is red.

I will do it myself.

In these examples, “he,” “him,” “it,” “her,” and “myself” are personal pronouns. That is, they work to replace specific nouns. Here’s how personal pronouns are categorized in English:

•
Subject pronouns
replace the subject of the sentence. In English, these are “I,” “you,” “he,” “she,” “it,” “we,” and “they.”

•
Object pronouns
represent the object noun or phrase. In English, these are “me,” “you,” “him,” “her,” “it,” “us,” and “them.”

•
Possessive pronouns
show ownership. In English, these are “my,” “mine,” “your,” “yours,” “his,” “her,” “hers,” “its,” “our,” “ours,” “their,” and “theirs.”

•
Reflexive pronouns
signal that the subject and the object are one and the same. In English, reflexive pronouns are “myself,” “yourself,” “himself,” “herself,” “itself,” “ourselves,” “yourselves,” and “themselves.”

Other types of pronouns might not be as easily recognizable because they don’t necessarily replace a particular noun. Can you figure out which words in the following examples are pronouns?

That was a great movie.

I know who it is you like.

The calculator, which I had used on Friday, is now missing.

What was that noise?

I have everything I need.

I like them both.

They love each other.

The pronouns here are “that,” “who,” “which,” “what,” “everything,” “both,” and “each other.” Here is how these pronouns are categorized:

Demonstrative pronouns
demonstrate
or point something out. In English, demonstrative pronouns are: this, that, these, and those. The word “this” in “I like this” is a good example of a demonstrative pronoun. As you can see, it replaces the thing or object which is liked.

Relative pronouns
relate
or connect groups of words to nouns or other pronouns. In English, relative pronouns include: who, whoever, whom, which, that, and whose. For example, in the phrase “I like who you like,” the pronoun “who” relates “I” and “you like.”

Many of the
interrogative pronouns
are identical to relative pronouns, but they are used differently—to
interrogate,
or ask questions. In English, interrogative pronouns include who, whom, which, whose, and what. In the question “who do you like?” “who” is an interrogative pronoun. Note that in the answer, this pronoun will be replaced by a noun again.

Indefinite pronouns
are non-personal pronouns that work as nouns. There are quite a few indefinite pronouns, and many can also be used as adjectives. A few examples in English are: all, none, any, some, everyone, someone, no one, much, little, few, everything, nothing, and something.

Reciprocal pronouns
show a mutual relationship between two subjects. In English, there are only two pairs of reciprocal pronouns: “each other” and “one another.”

ALERT