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To form the gerund of an -ar verb, replace the -ar of the infinitive with -ando; e.g. jugar, hablar, caminar → jugando, hablando, caminando. For -er or -ir verbs, replace the -er or -ir ending with -iendo ; e.g. comer , escribir , dormir → comiendo , escribiendo , durmiendo (note that dormir undergoes the stem vowel change that is typical ...
Hay un gato en el jardín. = "There is a cat in the garden." En el baúl hay fotografías viejas. = "In the trunk there are some old photos." To form perfect constructions, the past participle habido is used: Ha habido mucha confusión de esto. = "There's been a lot of confusion about this." Ha habido pocos hasta ahora. = "There have been few ...
The most basic is the difference between tú (vos in areas with voseo) and usted: tú or vos is the "familiar" form, and usted, derived from the third-person form "your grace" (vuestra merced), is the "polite" form. The appropriate usage of those forms is fundamental to interpersonal communication.
The dictionary form always has the vowel, not the diphthong, because, in the infinitive form, the stress is on the ending, not the stem. Exceptionally, the -u- of j u gar (u-ue -gar, -jugar) and the -i- of adqu i rir and inqu i rir (i-ie) also are subject to diphthongization ( juega , etc.; adquiere , etc.).
Similarly, the participle agrees with the subject when it is used with ser to form the "true" passive voice (e.g. La carta fue escrita ayer 'The letter was written [got written] yesterday.'), and also when it is used with estar to form a "passive of result", or stative passive (as in La carta ya está escrita 'The letter is already written.').
Until the mid-16th century, the short subject forms nos, vos 'we, you' were still found alongside the expanded forms nosotros, vosotros in writing. [34] The shorter form vos is used in Judaeo-Spanish, alongside the expanded vosotros, and the use of non-deferential, singular vos continues in much of Latin America, where it has become known as voseo.
For instance, casa 'house' forms the diminutive casita, and libro 'book' forms the diminutive librito. Exceptionally, in European Spanish, nouns ending in unstressed - a or - o generally takes the -ecito variant when the noun consists of two syllables and the stressed syllable contains the diphthong ie or ue , as in hierbecita (from hierba ...
Object pronouns may be both clitic and non-clitic, with non-clitic forms carrying greater emphasis. When used as clitics, object pronouns are generally proclitic , i.e. they appear before the verb of which they are the object; enclitic pronouns (i.e. pronouns attached to the end of the verb) appear with positive imperatives , infinitives , and ...