Spanish Grammar for Beginners: The 8 Parts of Speech
Sustantivos, verbos, artículos: you’ve probably heard your Spanish teacher talk about these terms in class, but do you know what they mean? These are just a few of the parts of speech you learn in Spanish grammar for beginners.
Today, we’ll learn the eight parts of speech in Spanish and what they look like. ¿Listo? ¡Aprendamos!
Before we get started, keep in mind that this lesson is just a general overview of the parts of speech. Follow the links to find more blog posts that explore the topics more profoundly.
If you’d like to polish your Spanish reading skills and try to identify parts of speech of what you read, download our Spanish eBook for beginners! It’s full of suspenseful and silly stories, great pictures, and English-Spanish parallel text. Click here to scroll to the bottom of this blog post where you can download it for free!
For all you learning Spanish grammar for beginners, the good news is that all of these parts of speech exist in English, as well. In fact, the two languages have a lot in common. Let’s check them out!
1. Noun – Sustantivo
The noun is one of the main building blocks of both English and Spanish. Nouns, or sustantivos, can be a person (persona), place (lugar), thing (cosa), or idea (idea). We use nouns to identify objects, feelings, and concepts. For example:
Person: Teacher – maestro
Place: Country – país
Thing: Pencil – lápiz
Idea: Love – amor
The above nouns in Spanish all have unique endings. However, there are some specific endings in Spanish that let us know that the word is a noun. These endings are:
-ción/-ión: canción, transición, aprobación (song, transition, approval)
-idad: unidad, profundidad, hermandad (unity, depth, brother/sisterhood)
-ez: sencillez, fluidez, diez (simplicity, fluidity, ten)
Nouns can appear anywhere in a sentence, but they often appear as the subject at the beginning of the sentence or as an object at the end. All the nouns in the following sentences are underlined.
La maestra pone el lápiz en la mesa.
The teacher puts the pencil on the table.
El perro corre en el jardín.
The dog runs in the yard.
Los niños juegan con el gato en la sala.
The children play with the cat in the living room.
2. Article – Artículo
Did you notice how every single noun (in both English and Spanish) is preceded by a tiny word? In English, this word is “the,” but in Spanish, there are various forms. These are called articles, or artículos. Their purpose is to specify which object or person we are talking about.
“The” can be translated four different ways in Spanish, depending on the gender and plurality of the noun it precedes.
Masculine singular: el
Masculine plural: los
Feminine singular: la
Feminine plural: las
Let’s look at our previous sentences and identify the articles.
La maestra pone el lápiz en la mesa.
The teacher puts the pencil on the table.
El perro corre en el patio.
The dog runs in the yard.
Los niños juegan con el gato en la sala.
The children play with the cat in the living room.
Now, these aren’t the only articles that exist! What we’ve already seen are called definite articles, and now we’ll look at the indefinite articles, which are “a” and “an” in English. Again, these artículos change depending on the noun.
Masculine singular: un Masculine plural: unos
Feminine singular: una Feminine plural: unas
Look how our sentences change with indefinite articles.
Una maestra pone un lápiz en una mesa.
A teacher puts a pencil on a table.
Un perro corre en un patio.
A dog runs in a yard.
Unos niños juegan con un gato en una sala.
Some children play with a cat in a living room.
*Note that in English there are no plural forms of the indefinite article. “Some” is not an article, but actually a pronoun, which we’ll look at later in this post.
3. Adjective – Adjetivo
Our next part of speech is the adjective, or a word that describes a noun. Adjectives in Spanish, just like in English, come in all shapes and sizes. A few common adjectives are:
Grande – big/large
Hermoso – beautiful
Azul – blue (yes, the colors are adjectives, too!)
The trick with adjetivos is to remember that they usually (no, not always!) come after the noun they describe. They can be placed before the noun, but it is not nearly as common and is usually used as a way to emphasize the adjective in the sentence. Look at our sentences with adjectives added.
La maestra nueva pone el lápiz amarillo en la mesa sucia.
The new teacher puts the yellow pencil on the dirty table.
El perro feo corre en el patio grande.
The ugly dog runs in the big yard.
Los niños traviesos juegan con el gato gris en la sala desorganizada.
The mischievous children play with the gray cat in the messy living room.
4. Pronoun – Pronombre
So far we’ve looked at nouns and words that accompany them, but we don’t always refer to nouns by their name. Instead of saying, “The teacher did this, the teacher taught us that, the teacher sent us homework,” we replace the noun with a pronoun, or pronombre, like “she.”
There are several types of pronouns, but for now, we will just look at subject pronouns, or pronombres, that replace the subject of the sentence.
I – yo
You – tú, usted, vos
He – él
She – ella
It – —
We – nosotros/nosotras
They – ellos/ellas
You all – ustedes
There are a few important things to note here. One, there is no Spanish word for “it”! If you want to express that idea in Spanish, you can use eso, which means “that.” There are also three ways to say the singular “you” – yes, three. Check out our blog post about the differences between formal and informal formats. Finally, both “we” and “they” have two forms. These forms have the same meaning but reflect the gender of the people they are referring to.
Nosotros and ellos are for groups with all men or a mix of men and women.
Nosotras and ellas are for groups with only women.
To practice with the subject pronouns, let’s put them in our sentences!
Ella pone el lápiz en la mesa.
She puts the pencil on the table.
Él corre en el patio.
He runs in the yard.
Ellos juegan con el gato en la sala.
They play with the cat in the living room.
5. Verb – Verbo
The verb, like the noun, is a part of all complete sentences. Los verbos describe an action or a state of being:
Pensar – to think
Vivir – to live
Ser – to be
The above verbs are in their neutral state, which is called the infinitive form. In English, this means that the word “to” precedes the verb. However, in Spanish, the infinitive form is marked by one of three endings: -AR, -ER, or -IR. Above you can find an example of each one. These endings determine how the verb changes in each tense.
Just like with the pronouns, Spanish verbs are a complex study. While learning Spanish grammar for beginners, it’s important to focus on verbs. One thing that sets them apart from English is that they have a particular form for each pronoun in each verb tense. That’s a lot of conjugating!
Let’s identify the verbs in each of the following sentences.
La maestra pone el lápiz en la mesa. (poner)
The teacher puts the pencil on the table.
El perro corre en el patio. (corner)
The dog runs in the yard.
Los niños juegan con el gato en la sala. (jugar)
The children play with the cat in the living room
6. Adverb – Adverbio
Just like nouns have adjectives to describe them, verbs have adverbs that give more description to the action. For example, instead of saying “she runs,” we can say “she runs fast.” “Fast” describes how the action is done.
Los adverbios in Spanish have many different forms, but a common ending is -mente.
Lentamente – slowly
Felizmente – happily
Cuidadosamente – carefully
To look at the adverbs in action, let’s put some in our sentences.
La maestra pone el lápiz cuidadosamente en la mesa.
The teacher carefully puts the pencil on the table.
El perro corre rápidamente en el patio.
The dog runs quickly in the yard.
Los niños juegan silenciosamente con el gato en la sala.
The children play quietly with the cat in the living room.
7. Preposition – Preposición
These final two parts of speech both look at the relationship between two nouns. The preposition explains how two nouns are related, often referring to a location. Some common prepositions in English are Spanish are:
En – in, on
Por – by, because of
Abajo – below
Adentro – inside
These words are normally sandwiched by two nouns, as you can see in the following examples:
La maestra pone el lápiz en / bajo la mesa.
The teacher puts the pencil on / below the table.
El perro corre en / alrededor del patio.
The dog runs in / around the yard.
Los niños juegan con el gato en la sala.
The children play with the cat in the living room.
8. Conjunction – Conjunción
The last part of speech is the conjunction, or a word that connects nouns, verbs, phrases, and sentences. There are simple conjunctions like:
Y – And
O – Or
Pero – But
Entonces – So
There are also more complex conjunctions, such as:
Sin embargo – However
Por lo tanto – Therefore
Así que – So
Aunque – Even though
Let’s see how we can add these to our sentences.
La maestra pone el lápiz en la mesa pero se car.
The teacher puts the pencil on the table but it falls off.
Aunque el perro y el niño corrieron en el patio, todavía tienen energía.
Even though the dog and the boy ran in the yard, they still have energy.
Los niños juegan con el gato en la sala. Así que no nos van a molestar.
The children play with the cat in the living room. So, they will not bother us.
Put them into Practice!
Now that you’ve explore Spanish grammar for beginners and you know all the parts of speech in Spanish, go and impress your Spanish teacher! If you don’t have a private teacher, try a free trial class today with one of our amazing Spanish teachers! They love teaching Spanish grammar for beginners and can give you some extra practice with the Spanish parts of speech. ¡Buena suerte!
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Hi Lucius! You may want to check out our post on the top 100 high-frequency words in Spanish!