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If the verb is in the present perfect, for example, the tag question uses has or have; if the verb is in a present progressive form, the tag is formed with am, are, is; if the verb is in a tense which does not normally use an auxiliary, like the present simple, the auxiliary is taken from the emphatic do form; and if the sentence has a modal ...
NEG se CL puede can. 1SG pisar walk el the césped grass No se puede pisar el césped NEG CL can.1SG walk the grass "You cannot walk on the grass." Zagona also notes that, generally, oblique phrases do not allow for a double clitic, yet some verbs of motion are formed with double clitics: María María se CL fue went.away- 3SG María se fue María CL went.away-3SG "Maria went away ...
Some Spanish words with the Spanish letter ñ have been naturalised by substituting English ny (e.g., Spanish cañón is now usually English canyon, Spanish piñón is now usually English pinyon pine). Certain words, like piñata, jalapeño and quinceañera, are usually kept intact.
A regular question mark is written at the end of the sentence or clause. Upside-down punctuation is especially critical in Spanish since the syntax of the language means that both statements and questions or exclamations could have the same wording. [2] "Do you like summer?" and "You like summer." are translated respectively as "¿Te gusta el ...
Spanish has vestiges of a neuter gender; this is seen in pronouns like esto, eso, aquello, and ello, some instances of pronoun lo, and the article lo. Bello also notes that words such as nada, poco, algo, and mucho can be used as neuters in some contexts. However, all this doesn't affect nouns, which never have a neutral gender. [citation needed]
Also many (but not all) languages have words that function like the English 'yes' and 'no', used to give short answers to yes–no questions. In languages that do not have words compared to English 'yes' and 'no', e.g. Chinese, speakers may need to answer the question according to the question. For example, when asked 喜歡喝茶嗎？
When the final consonants in these endings are dropped, the result is -u for both; this became -o in Spanish. However, a word like Latin iste had the neuter istud; the former became este and the latter became esto in Spanish. Another sign that Spanish once had a grammatical neuter exists in words that derive from neuter plurals.
While the majority of lexical differences between Spanish and Portuguese come from the influence of the Arabic language on Spanish vocabulary, [1] [2] most of the similarities and cognate words in the two languages have their origin in Latin, [3] but several of these cognates differ, to a greater or lesser extent, in meaning.