4
Here we are on day four. We had chicken paella (paella de pollo, literally ‘paella of chicken’) for lunch and I also had two glasses of vino (wine) and some queso (cheese). Yum! La comida está rica, the food is yummy, literally 'the food is [[[this 'is' (está) from the one of two 'to be' verbs in Spanish, which I will explain later]]] rich. Fun!
Now I will discuss conjugation! It’s high time. I love conjugation. It really got exciting when I began learning Latin and saw how Latin would become various tenses in Spanish, or Italian, or Portuguese, and so on and so forth.
Maybe if I have the energy and it doesn’t seem too laborious to write (or to be read by you) I’ll tackle definite articles as well.
We’ll begin conjugation with the present tense, presently. I have already informed you that the ‘yo form’ (‘I’ form, first person singular) ends in ‘o’. There are only a handful of exceptions to this rule.
There are three main verb types (you might also call them paradigms) and the three each have a theme vowel, found in the infinitive right next to the R (which as you know is what infinitives always end in). The first paradigm (and arguably the easiest to deal with) is -AR verbs, theme vowel A (you can call them A-R verbs spelling out the English letters A R or more preferably in practice calling them ‘verbos -ar’ [verbos a-erre] or even verbos de la primera paradigm // verbos de la primera conjugación, using Spanish to describe the concept. In this article I’ll use the English convention I learned in school since the article is, after all, in English, and addressing native English speakers.) Okay so then come -ER verbs, and lastly -IR verbs. In many cases -ER and -IR verbs are similar to each other. So those are your three, -AR, -ER, -IR. The first person singular form (YO form) for all paradigms ends in -o, with, as I said, only a handful of exceptions.
We’ll use the word hablar, which is a regular -ar verb (so a verb from the first paradigm of the three). Hablar means to speak. To conjugate the verb, we drop the infinitive ending (which in this case is -ar) and we add our personal endings (this time it’s personal *wink*). Yo hablo. I speak / I am speaking (the present tense in Spanish can be translated as both the present simple / present continuous tense in English, depending on context). From the first person singular, we go to the second person singular, which, in -ar verbs, has the ending of -as. The word for the singular you in Spanish is tú, written with an accent mark not to denote a difference in pronunciation, but rather to differentiate it from the word (and homophone) tu, which is the masculine singular form of singular your in English. So, with our ending, tú hablas. You (singular) speak / you (singular) are speaking. And now to the third person singular ending, which is -a. The word for she is ella. The word for he is él, written with an accent mark not to denote a difference in pronunciation, but rather to differentiate from the word (and homophone) el, which is the masculine singular form of the definite article (‘the’ in English). My gender-neutral pronoun in Spanish (a relatively new word coined in the transgender community) is élle, written with an accent mark to differentiate from the word elle, which is the name for the digraph LL. Sometimes I spell it like eye, with a y, just because that’s an option I have. Also in Spanish I accept ella or él, though I find use of élle preferable when I am in circles of people with who I feel comfortable communicating this to. So, to reiterate, the ending for the third person singular is -a, and so you would go to hablar and conjugate it to habla, so ella habla, él habla, élle habla. I have to add that in Spanish there is a ‘formal you’ as in many other languages. The word is usted, which comes from vuestra merced, which means ‘your (plural your) mercy’, or less literally translated, your grace. Harkening back to medieval times, I’d say. So keeping in mind that usted is a step forward in an etymological process that began with the Spanish translation of your grace, which is most certainly a third person singular idea, remember that usted (rarely written out; usually abbreviated to Ud. and obligatorily capitalized) is added to the third person singular form of the verb, even though it means (formal) ‘you’. Think about sentences like ‘does your grace like the antics of the jester’, or ‘would the lady like another coffee to go with her tea and crumpets?’ It’s Ud. habla, ‘you (formal) are speaking’.
So now we have done the singular, but what about the plural? Well, the first person plural ending is -amos, and the word for ‘we’ is... well, it varies by gender, so nosotras (feminine form), nosotros (masculine form) and nosotres (neutral form, more newly minted, use limited to some small communities who realize that the gender binary is a bullshit product of the patriarchy). To those who are not, shall we say ‘in the know’, the tendancy is to use the masculine form for, and I quote ‘a group of men or a group of men and women’ and to use the feminine form for, and I again quote, ‘a group of only women’. So, welcome to sexism in language. Without getting into too much of a discussion, I should add to our knowledge base that some people make an effort to be inclusive by saying things like ‘nosotros y nosotras hablamos’ ‘we (men) and we (women) speak/are speaking’ or ‘mis amigos y amigas’ (my friends [masculine] and friends [feminine]), but you can see the problematic nature of this practice, yes? --- And now for the second person plural ending, which is áis, and the word for you all, which is vosotras (feminine) / vosotros (masculine) / vosotres (neutral, usage frustratingly restricted). Same deal with the ending in the pronoun as in the first person plural form. In informal writing, you can write nosotr@s and vosotr@s, written with the @ sign as a practice of being inclusive to all genders, but the tricky part is that no one has ever been able to tell me how that would be pronounced in speech. So, vosotras/vosotros/vosotres/vosotr@s habláis. And finally, the third person plural ending, which is -an. The third person feminine plural pronoun is ellas and the masculine plural pronoun is ellos (this is irregular; it’s not *éls). And élles would be the neutral. Ellas hablan, ellos hablan, elles hablan, ell@s hablan. They (plural) are speaking/they speak. And we have a plural form of the formal you usted, which is ustedes (abbreviated Uds.)(from vuestras mercedes, your graces), which goes with the third person plural in a manner analogous to what we do with ‘usted’ (as in, it’s YOU ALL but it doesn’t go with habláis, the second person plural verb form, but rather with hablan, the third person plural form, because it comes from ‘your graces’). So, ellas/ellos/élles/ell@s/ustedes hablan.
Now you can practice with yourself, yo hablo, tú hablas, and so on. But remember that hablo by itself also means I am speaking because that -o ending is reserved for the yo-form. So in this case, as with many other verb forms, the subject is not included when it can be inferred from the verb ending, and would only be used for the purposes of clarification. --- However, in certain Spanishes, largely because of the influence of English, the pronoun already implied in the verb form is ADDED ANYWAY, notably in Puerto Rican Spanish (our Puerto Rican friend Priscilla often says to me tú sabes, ‘you know’, as an interjection after a given phrase, when we speak together in Spanish. So a Puerto Rican speaker might say Yo hablo español, I speak Spanish, even though the ‘I’ is implied in the verb, simply because that would be a Puerto Rican way to say this, although it is by no means obligatory and does not always happen).
So here are the forms:
hablo
hablas
habla
hablamos
habláis
hablan
Here is a complete conjugation table for ‘hablar’, with the entire conjugation written out, for your reference, though you have only learned the present tense so far: http://www.wordreference.com/conj/EsVerbs.aspx?v=hablar
A few notes. VOSOTR@S is only used in peninsular Spanish (that is, Spanish spoken on Manu’s side of the Atlantic Ocean). In Latin American Spanish, ustedes is how they express ‘you all’ in any context and is not formal. They express formality using other words, like they might say ‘señores ustedes’ to express formality. Additionally, there is a second person singular pronoun vos which is used in many Latin American countries (notably Argentina; my host mother in Madrid used this form). In Argentina, vos is informal, tú is more formal, and usted is the most formal. I won’t explain vos now, but if you are curious, you can find the vos form conjugated in the link I sent you.
Okay so now for the second paradigm. -ER verbs (regular ones, that is) are conjugated like -AR verbs, but you will see the theme vowel ‘e’ instead of a theme vowel ‘a’ (logical, right?) -- one regular -ER verb is temer (to fear). I include the conjugation below, underlining the endings added to the stem of the verb (that is, the part of the verb with the infinitive ending -ER chopped off):
yo temo
tú temes
ella/él/élle/Ud. teme
nosotr@s tememos
vosotr@s teméis
ellas/ellos/élles/Uds. temen
And finally, the third paradigm is -IR verbs. In this case as in others, -IR verbs have a lot in common with -ER verbs. The example verb is vivir (to live), which is a regular -IR verb.
vivo
vives
vive
vivimos
vivís
viven
Notice how the -IR verbs are conjugated with the same endings as -ER verbs except for in the first person plural and second person plural. You will notice (or may already have noticed) that the first person plural and second person plural follow similar patterns.
And there you go! So study these verb forms, and then you will be delighted to learn the many tenses and exceptions to the rules! :D
Now I’ll briefly tackle definite articles. The English definite article is ‘the’, and it only has one form, but in Spanish, the article changes form depending on gender (feminine/masculine) and number (singular or plural). Spanish nouns do the same thing. Let’s take the noun la mesa (in Spanish you must memorize nouns accompanied by the definite article, as in other Romance languages, such as French), yes, la mesa, which means ‘the table’ and is (you guessed it) a feminine word. Obviously this ‘feminine’ thing has no correlation with human gender; it is grammatical terminology. So la mesa is feminine, and the plural is las mesas. So you see, you have to put an ‘s’ on the article just like on the noun, because the article must match the noun. Now let’s look at the masculine noun el libro, which is ‘the book’. The plural is los libros. Notice that we were able to add an ‘s’ onto the word libro, but in the case of the article, the singular el changed to the plural los. This is an irregularity; you just have to remember that the plural of el is los, not *els. I COULD explain the etymological reason as to why it’s irregular, but that’s a conversation for another day.
Often nouns end in -a if they are feminine and -o if they are masculine, but el planeta is a masculine noun that ends in -a and la mano is a feminine noun that ends in -o, la mente is a feminine noun that ends in a different vowel entirely, and el andén is a masculine noun that ends in a consonant. For this reason it is necessary to remember the noun with the definite article that accompanies it, because the article will tell you whether it’s feminine (la, las) or masculine (el, los)
Some more examples.
la granja (the farm), las granjas (the farms)
el cuello (the neck), los cuellos (the necks)
la flecha (the arrow), las flechas (the arrows)
el gobierno (the government), los gobiernos (the governments)
la cama (the bed), las camas (the beds)
la película (the movie) las películas (the movies)
Nouns that end in consonants add -es to the plural.
el reloj (the watch [for telling time]), los relojes (the watches)
el sabor (the flavor), los sabores (the flavors)
la red (the net), las redes (the nets)
Words like the noun la televisión need an accent mark to indicate stress (if your memory needs jogging I explained this in an earlier blog entry). However, upon adding the ending -es to pluralize this noun, you will notice that according to these rules that I mentioned having explained, you no longer need the accent mark. So *televisiónes is not a thing because words that end in -s already carry the stress on the penultimate syllable by rule, and only a word like *télevisiones or *televísiones or *televisionés would fly with the rule. Of course, none of those examples are actually words, but you understand why televisión needs an accent mark but televisiones does not. Words like the noun el examen need no accent mark in the singular, but the plural los exámenes does have an accent mark because if it didn’t have an accent mark the resultant word would be examenes and this word would, as per The Rules, carry the stress on the penultimate syllable, when it’s clear the stress needs to be on the third-to-last syllable because the singular word was examen, not *examén.
As I have mentioned, I use the gender neutral pronoun élle in Spanish. The word for a person from the United States is estadounidense, which comes from Estados Unidos, which means United States. So if you wanted to say ‘the person from the United States’, what definite article would you use? I am okay with both the feminine and masculine forms of things in Spanish, but you can use the neutral articles ‘le’ (singular), ‘les’ (plural). Now these words also have other meanings in Spanish besides being neutral definite articles, and I will explain these meanings later. Suffice it to say that is what you might use in that kind of a situation.
I had better stop here. Will write more later!
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