Spanish has both masculine and feminine nouns. It is important to use the right modifiers (articles, adjectives, etc.) for each gender.
Spanish sentence structure is remarkably similar to English. One of the main differences is the omission of the subject:
You can begin these sentences with yo if you wish, but the sentences above are more common.
Verb conjugation in Spanish is more complicated than in English. Here is the conjugation in the singular for beber, "to drink":
This is regular for most verbs ending in -er. Comer, "to eat", also follows this pattern. One exception is ser, "to be":
These exceptions will have to be memorized.
In Latin America the pronoun for the "you (pl.)" is ustedes, and in Spain it is vosotros. The two pronouns are synonyms, but they change the way of conjugating verbs. For example, to say "you guys eat", in Latin America you would say ustedes comen, and in Spain vosotros coméis. As Duolingo teaches Latin American Spanish, it does not teach the usage of vosotros. However, it is important to know the difference and when to use either.
Speaking of which, Spanish has multiple ways of saying "you":
Now you should know all of the subject pronouns in Spanish:
The conjugation for verbs with an infinitive ending in -er are:
This is the case for beber, comer, and ler (with an added -e- for pronunciation). It is not the case for ser ("to be") and escribir (which has a different ending altogether).
Plurals are easy in Spanish; all you do is add an -(e)s like in English
For the definite article ("the"), add an -s to la to make las and change el to los.
In English, "afternoon" comes before "evening," which in turn comes before "night." In Spanish there are only two words that cover these times of the day. The word tarde means "afternoon," but overlaps with "evening," Similarly, the word noche, which means "night", also overlaps with "evening." Therefore, at 6:30pm it is ok to say either buenas tardes or buenas noches.
Both está and es mean "is".
Está is used for location (where something/someone is).
Está is also used for temporary states of existence. For example, when you say the taxi is here, it's location isn't permanent.
Es is used for describing the characteristics something possesses.
Es is used for describing a state of being.
It's easy to make a negative statement in Spanish: simply say no before the verb.
Escribir, estudiar, and leer are all verb forms called infinitives.
In English, infinitives always have the word to at the start (like to study or to read). But in Spanish, they don't require any extra words, To say I want to study, you'd just say Yo quiero estudiar.
In Spanish, me llamo is used to say my name is. lt literally means l call myself.
In Spanish, the endings of adjectives depend on the gender of what they describe.
To ask where someone is from, you can say ¿De dónde eres?.
In general, use es for permanent traits and event locations, and use está for temporary traits and other loactions!