Intermediate Spanish For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Verb conjugation is always a difficult part of learning a foreign language. Once you have determined the tense being used in Spanish, you use the information here to conjugate any regular verb. This information shows you how to conjugate the Spanish verb hablar (to speak).

The following information shows you how to conjugate the Spanish verbs beber (to drink) and subir (to go up).

Learning to conjugate irregular verbs takes some practice when learning to speak Spanish. The following information gives you an introduction to some verbs that are used frequently and how to conjugate them in the present tense.

You may be questioning why it’s so important to know your Spanish grammar. Can’t you just grab a dictionary when you want to find a word and move on? The answer would be “yes” if it were that simple a task. What many people fail to realize is that a Spanish word may have many applications depending on its usage in the sentence. So, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with these parts of speech.

• A noun is a part of speech that refers to a person, place, thing, quality, idea, or action.

• A verb is a part of speech that shows action or a state of being. A transitive verb requires a direct object to complete its meaning. An intransitive verb doesn’t have an object.

• A pronoun is a part of speech that replaces a noun.

• An adjective modifies a noun.

• An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.

• A preposition shows the relation of a noun to some other word in the sentence.

• Demonstrative pronouns express “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those.”

• A subject pronoun is followed by the verb expressing the main action in the sentence. These pronouns include I, you, he, she, it, we, and they.

• Possessive pronouns indicate that something belongs to a specific person (my, your, his, her, its, our, their).

• Interrogative pronouns ask a question (who, which, what, and so on).

• Direct object pronouns replace direct object nouns and answer who or what the subject is acting upon.

• Indirect object pronouns replace indirect object nouns and explain to or for whom something is done.

• Reflexive pronouns show that the subject is acting upon itself.

A gerund is a verb form ending in -ing that you sometimes use in the present progressive tense in Spanish. Although you’ve undoubtedly heard of the present tense, the present progressive is a tense that may be quite unfamiliar to you, even though you use it on a daily basis. Here are a few tips for forming gerunds in Spanish.

Here are a few examples of forming gerunds of regular Spanish verbs.

Now, check out how to form gerunds of -er or -ir verbs ending in a vowel.

Forming commands is an important part of learning Spanish. Can you guess how many times you’ve had to give people directions to your home or to a restaurant? In all these situations, you’ve had to use the imperative, which is a fancy way of saying that you’ve given commands. Just like in English, the imperative isn’t a tense in Spanish because it doesn’t show time. It’s called a mood because it indicates the manner in which the action occurs.

Remember that the subject of a command is understood to be you.

If you plan on using you’re your newfound Spanish-speaking skills to visit a new place, you’ll likely need to know how to ask for information. When you want to ask for information in Spanish, you’ll more than likely use one of the following words/phrases: