Talk:Spanish grammar

message: User:Hdezela mentioned "unused rules" of the RAE regarding inverted question and exclamation marks and accents on uppercase letters. I've reverted those edits since I think they were not accurate and would anyway need some source (besides anecdotic personal experience).
*It is true that many people today leave out the so-called inverted marks, but that's mostly in email and cell phone text messages; nobody's leaving them out in other forms of writing (newspapers, TV news, TV ads, CVs, books, pamphlets, etc.). When children leave them out, they're still corrected by the teachers, so the rule is not "unused".
*It is also true that many people leave out the accents on uppercase letters (and not only in all-uppercase words). In my experience, people often claim they thought it was correct to do so or even that there was a rule dictating it. But that again is my personal experience.
The other thing is the form of the cleft construction. In my dialect at least, nobody uses quien as a relative pronoun except in formal speech, and then they consistently use quien instead of el/la que regardless of the purpose of the sentence (informative or responsive). The only thing that may change is the order of the clauses: "Fue Juan el que perdió las llaves" vs. "El que perdió las llaves fue Juan", also vs. simply "Las llaves las perdió Juan". --Pablo D. Flores 15:20, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Rules of the RAE, and cleft sentences

message: Could someone please add a section or paragraphs about conjunctions?  I know there are at least a couple forms of y, depending on what follows, though I don't speak Spanish.  --LakeHMM 04:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I added a small subsection in the "Miscellaneous" section concerning just y and o. I figure that for the moment only those idiosyncratic conjuctions need be mentioned. Unless I am missing something, I believe those are the only ones that actually change forms; and I am a native speaker (though I can be wrong). If anything, a short list can be added later of other generally-used conjunctions, like the preposition section.
Jorge Padrón 04:21, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Those are contractions, not conjunctions. Spanish has a number of conjunctions, including y , o , pero, sino, que, como, pues, among others. Only y and o have alternate forms. Nohat 22:21, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conjunctions 

message: I've found coger in the REAL  ACADEMIA  ESPAÑOLA dictionary . It verifies that the vulgar use of coger but says its use is just American. But I'm unable to link to it. The site seems as reliable as online sources can be. --41.245.12.244 21:38, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since the Americas have 90% of the Spanish speaking population, saying that a Spanish usage is just American is like saying that a something is done by just people under 63. On the other side, coger has the vulgar meaning mainly in Mexico and Argentina. In that case the word just could be used. Pablo.cl (talk) 21:04, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Verifying coger 

message: I don't think that it is the best to have the word "fuck" on this page. Imagine if a person wanted to look up Spanish on wikipedia and saw "fuck", not so good huh? I suggest moving the part about coger to a Spanish vulgarity page if it does mean "to fuck". GlassDesk (talk) 15:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coger 

message: The dialect variations section, while interesting, is a bit... sparse. Might someone who is an expert on the subject go a little more in depth on the grammatical gender section and beyond?
Thanks!
66.68.154.201 (talk) 23:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dialect variations 

message: This article seems to be too short given the importance of Spanish language in the world. Compare it with the length of Basque grammar, spoken by only a million people.
--Againme (talk) 15:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too short 

message: Why are the headers on all the tables in Spanish?  I really don't think the integrity of the information would be compromised by translating these into English, and considering that those who prefer to read such descriptions in Spanish probably use la Wikipedia Español, I see no reason not to do so.  --128.84.27.98 (talk) 20:04, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table Headings 

message: Why doesn't the article mention nouns? --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:37, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It mentions them now. :-) --Jotamar (talk) 18:12, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nouns 

message: The conjugation of verbs should be more in depth, and include tables for all of the different tenses- Chakradragon (talk) 03:08, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: That is already covered in Spanish verbs and Spanish conjugation. --Jotamar (talk) 17:25, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Verbs 

message: I've changed the statement about demonstrative pronouns to say they "usually" have a written accent, based on my count of data in the "Corpus del Español" at <http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/>.  To locate demonstrative pronouns and omit demonstrative adjectives, I did searches for the sequence [demonstrative word] plus [object pronoun] (as in "éste le dijo").  Specifically, I counted instances of "este", "esta", "estos", and "estas" -- with and without an accent -- before "le", "lo", and "me".  The frequency of accented forms ranged from 78% to 83%, which I think justifies my word "usually".  Kotabatubara (talk) 21:24, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Demonstrative pronouns 

message: There is no section dedicated to adverbs, or adverbs have been left out as a part of speach in Spanish.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gabrielmontespadilla (talk • contribs) 23:13, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adverbs 

message: The wording of this article seems to speak from a bias towards the standard Spanish of Spain, rather than taking a more neutral point of view. Is there any reason for this? Why isn't voseo included in the tables, just like how they appear in the RAE's dictionary, instead of putting it in a separate section by the end as if it were something strange? Why is the negligible use of vosotros mentioned as something particular to Latin America, even though the vast majority of Spanish speakers lives there, rather than mentioning the use of vosotros is particular to Spain? I'll proceed to change the point of view of this article to a more neutral one in a few days if there seem to be no objections...--Serafín33 (talk) 05:48, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bias from the Spanish of Spain 

message: Why is there no section for future tense? At least the simple future.
Techineer (talk) 03:32, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Check the Main articles under heading Verbs. --Jotamar (talk) 17:53, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Paradigms for Future tense? 

message: As someone pointed out above, there's no section on adverbs in this article at all.  I'd be happy to create one, but before I do that, could someone please tell me how the superlative of adverbs is formed?  According to this site, most adverbs don't have a relative superlative at all (although they do have absolute superlatives), this site says that you use the definite article + más/menos  + the adverb but doesn't elaborate, and on the basis of my own limited experience, I thought you used lo + más/menos + the adverb; I know you can say things like lo mejor que pueda.  Is there a way to form the relative superlative for most adverbs, and if so, what is it? Esszet (talk) 22:06, 10 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: You mean something like lo más temprano, lo más lejos ? --Jotamar (talk) 15:49, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, can you say things like that or lo más rápidamente? Esszet (talk) 16:29, 18 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: You typically would add an adjective or adjectival clause, for example ven lo más rápidamente que puedas. --Jotamar (talk) 14:51, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Alright, one more thing: I very recently found out that -mente is dropped from all but the last adverb in series of adverbs that would each end in -mente on their own, but does that apply even if there's an adverb like despacio or temprano in the middle?  Thus, is it orgullosa, despacio, y triunfantemente or orgullosamente, despacio, y triunfantemente? Esszet (talk) 01:12, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be the second one, but I wouldn't recommend it, it sounds a little awkward. --Jotamar (talk) 14:39, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adverbs 

message: At the moment, there's a great deal of overlap between Spanish determiners and the determiners section here.  What should we do about it?  I say we should trim down the section here as much as possible; getting rid of the determiners article and merging it with this one would probably make the section here a little too long. Esszet (talk) 17:39, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: It's ok, contents shouldn't be repeated, as long as the different pages are clearly linked, so that no reader misses what they are looking for. --Jotamar (talk) 17:49, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overlap 

message: Hi, I'm a learner so I'm not very sure, but I think the following example may be wrong. In the example "Fue a mí a quien le dio permiso", lit. "It was to me to whom he gave permission", le is translated to he and seems to be used as a subject. According to wiktionary, le is usually the indirect object (and sometimes the direct object in case of Leísmo). I couldn't find any text where le is used as a subject. Am I mistaking anything?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dz-cies (talk • contribs) 09:24, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: "Le" is used here in the normal way, as an indirect object, not as a subject. You may question why "le" and not "me"; let's say the subordinate clause is construed from the viewpoint of a hearer who didn't know the answer was "a mí". Kotabatubara (talk) 14:57, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ah! I see. The 'he' in the literal translation is somehow misleading. So maybe a better literal translation would be "It was to me to whom was given permission"? Dz-cies (talk) 14:01, 24 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the verb "dio" here is active, with an implied specific third-person-singular subject, a previous "he" or "she" in the context.  To make it passive we'd need a "se".Kotabatubara (talk) 14:36, 25 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: You are right :p Many thanks for your illustration. Dz-cies (talk) 01:46, 26 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  le dio permiso 

message: Because that's what the opening says. Me permito dudarlo. deisenbe (talk) 23:43, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: I've made a few small changes that hopefully fix that. --Jotamar (talk) 01:05, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are peninsular and American Spanish "dialects"? 

message: The followiing was in a Spanish newspaper, I don't remember where:
::Los médicos no pudieron hacer nada para salvar a la víctima y a los pocos minutos moría.
I've discussed this with native speakers and they say the imperfect does not mark a long(er) action, an action in progress, but something that happened abruptly, and the imperfect is just there for contrast. The explanation of the tenses in this article does not allow for this. ~ cc
:That should be dealt with in Spanish verbs, rather than here. Anyway, I think that a comprehensive explanation of all possible tense usages in Spanish is beyond what a WP page can accommodate. --Jotamar (talk) 01:13, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Imperfect question