Spanish Grammar

When you learn Spanish, you’re going to spend a lot of time getting familiar with Spanish grammar rules. For many people, the thought of learning grammar isn’t necessarily a pleasant one, and we can’t blame you if you think that way. But Spanish grammar doesn’t have to be a chore to learn; in fact, with the right tools and teachers, it can be a low-friction endeavor and even a fun one!

All languages have grammar, or rules that tell us how to use their individual elements (words) to build longer structures that convey meaning (sentences). Learning grammar is an essential part of learning any new language, and Spanish is no exception! Luckily, once you start to learn how Spanish grammar works, you’ll find out it’s not all that intimidating after all.

How Difficult Is Spanish Grammar?

Is Spanish Grammar Easy?

Many people choose to learn Spanish over other languages because they’ve heard that Spanish grammar is relatively easy to learn. While it’s true that Spanish grammar rules aren’t necessarily hard, they do take patience and practice to master, just like with any new skill.

Some elements of Spanish grammar are known to be more difficult for learners than others are — especially those elements that are more unfamiliar to native English speakers, like complex verb conjugations, a tricky concept many Spanish learners have trouble mastering.

You might struggle with some aspects of Spanish grammar and breeze through others. A lot of what you’ll find easy depends on the language or languages you already speak and how similar they are to Spanish. And you can’t forget that everyone learns differently, so the parts of Spanish grammar that give you trouble might be a piece of cake for someone else, and vice versa.

Is Spanish Grammar Similar To English?

Spanish grammar is similar to English grammar in many ways that make it fairly easy to make connections between the two languages. Both Spanish and English have the same parts of speech — like verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives and prepositions, for example — and the two languages often treat these parts of speech in the same ways.

But there are certain ways Spanish grammar rules differ from those of English. You might have heard that unlike English, Spanish is a gendered language, meaning each noun — not just every person — has an associated gender classification that shows up in the language. (More on that below.) And gender in Spanish affects Spanish adjectives, which change their endings to match the gender and number of the nouns they refer to.

As mentioned above, there’s also the topic of Spanish verbs, which require a bit more manipulation to use correctly than English verbs do. Spanish verb conjugation, or changing verb endings according to specific rules, is somewhat of a foreign concept to English speakers, making it a major point of difference between the two languages.

If all of this sounds a little confusing, don’t fret! Part of getting better at Spanish is practicing Spanish grammar rules that might not make much sense at first. But you’ll soon get the hang of them with just a little effort.

Introduction To Spanish Grammar: What Are Spanish Grammar Rules?

Along with Spanish vocabulary, you’ve got to know Spanish grammar to be able to use the language. In order to express ideas and form sentences in Spanish, you need to understand and follow Spanish grammar rules.

Basic Spanish Sentence Structure

The primary parts of the Spanish sentence are the subject, the verb and the object(s). For the most part, Spanish grammar follows the subject-verb-object word order as English does. For example, in a sentence like Yo quiero comida, the pronoun yo (“I”) is the subject, quiero (“want”) is the verb and comida (“food’”) is the object of that verb.

The order of other words in a Spanish is generally the same as in an English sentence, with some exceptions. In Spanish grammar, for example, adjectives usually follow the nouns they describe instead of coming before them, like they do in English. And object and reflexive pronouns like “him,” “herself” and “us” must come before the verb in many cases.

But Spanish can be a little more flexible, too, than English in the order of words in the sentence. In many cases you can even leave out the subject if the context and the ending of the verb make it clear who’s doing the action. And forming questions doesn’t often require moving around words and adding auxiliary words like “do” or “does” like English requires.

Spanish Verbs And Spanish Verb Tenses

Perhaps one of the most important parts of Spanish grammar is knowing how to use Spanish verbs — and that means knowing how to deal with Spanish verb conjugations. While verb conjugations technically exist in English as well, there aren’t nearly as many, so learning them (and how and when to use them) takes time and discipline in Spanish.

First, we start with an infinitive. Spanish verbs exist in what’s known as the infinitive form, what English speakers would think of as a verb in the “to (verb)” form — like “to do,” “to eat” or “to sleep,” for example. All of these Spanish infinitives end in one of three endings: -ar (like the verb cantar, “to sing”), -er (like beber, “to drink”) or -ir (like vivir, “to live”).

Conjugating a verb in Spanish means changing the ending of the verb to match the subject (so, who or what is doing the action of the verb) and the tense (when in time the action is happening). Depending on whether you’re speaking Latin American or European Spanish, there are either 5 or 6 different verb endings in the present tense alone.

Here’s an example for a verb in the present tense: take a regular verb ending in -ar, like hablar (“to speak”). If the pronoun yo (“I”) is the subject, or the one doing the speaking, you drop the -ar ending from the verb and add the ending -o, giving yo hablo, or “I speak.” For the pronoun tú (“you”), hablar becomes tú hablas, or “you speak.”

Each potential subject has its own special conjugation, or verb ending, associated with it, and this applies for all verbs, whether they end in -ar, -er, or -ir — though the conjugations are slightly different for each ending.

Two of the most useful Spanish verbs are ser and estar, which both mean “to be” but are used in two different contexts. The verb ser is used for more permanent conditions, qualities and characteristics — like one’s place of origin, name, occupation or personality — whereas estar is reserved for more fleeting, temporary states of being, like one’s location, position, moods and emotions and continuous actions.The distinction between ser and estar is one of the first topics you’ll learn in Spanish grammar, so you’ll surely get lots of practice with the concept.

You’ll also get to know special “modal” verbs that turn a basic verb into a more complex verb phrase that expresses necessity or possibility, for example — verbs like "should" and "can." They are conjugated and come before an infinitive form of another verb. So, if we take the sentence Nosotros podemos cantar ahora, or “We can sing now,” we see that the verb poder (“can” or “to be able to”) is conjugated (podemos, for the subject nosotros) but the main verb cantar (“to sing”) remains an infinitive.

Spanish Nouns And Spanish Articles (And Spanish Gender)

Just like in English, one of the key elements of Spanish grammar is the Spanish noun, which describes a thing, person, place, idea, quality or action. Spanish nouns are important because in many cases they indicate who or what is doing the action of the verb (the subject) — or who or what is having that action done to it (the object). They are fundamental parts of a Spanish sentence!

According to Spanish grammar, all Spanish nouns have a number (singular or plural, a concept which also exists in English) and a gender (masculine or feminine).

Talking about number and gender of Spanish nouns isn’t too complicated. To start, the fact that nouns in Spanish grammar can be singular or plural is a familiar idea to English speakers. In most cases, to form a plural noun Spanish speakers add an -s to the end of a singular noun, just like in English. So the word meaning “book,” libro, becomes libros, and the word manzana, meaning “apple,” becomes manzanas. For words ending in a consonant like color (“color”) or nivel (“level”), you add the ending -es to give colores and niveles, for example. Not too hard, right?

Practicing Spanish Grammar With Babbel

Learning Spanish with Spanish grammar exercises doesn’t have to be boring or anxiety-inducing at all. In fact, Babbel makes mastering Spanish grammar interactive, engaging and much more fun!

Babbel is designed to help guide you through all the elements of Spanish grammar, from the simplest to the most complex.

Our courses help you deepen your understanding of Spanish grammar and improve your language level using in-depth lessons created by language experts and teachers.

Babbel’s Spanish grammar exercises are designed to strengthen your skills in the four areas of language learning — reading, writing, speaking and listening — and make sure the content you’re learning is committed to your long-term memory. Helpful tips along the way help you reinforce what you’re learning by making connections in new ways.

And almost every lesson features a simulated real-life dialogue to help you put what you’re learning about Spanish grammar into context in the sorts of conversations you’d be having with native speakers.

Try getting a handle on Spanish grammar with a free Babbel Spanish lesson!