¡Hola! Welcome to a new lesson. This time, we will focus on the basics to build or make basic sentences in Spanish. We will study each part of the sentence, provide interesting examples and have an interactive grammar quiz for you to practice this really important topic. Let’s start…
What are sentences in Spanish? What are the parts of a simple sentence?
The word “ORACIÓN” is used to refer to “a sentence” in Spanish. Actually, this word can also be used as both “Prayer” and “Sentence”. Grammatically speaking, “una oración” is a syntactic structure formed by a subject and a predicate. It may sound strange, but the definition applies to both English and Spanish. To put it differently, sentences in Spanish are formed by placing a subject first, then adding a verb and finally adding an object. Also, do not forget to add a period at the end of your sentences and begin with capital letter.
“El sujeto” is the subject of the sentence. As you can see, grammar terms in both languages usually sound alike. Just like in English, the subject will be the name of a person, a place, an object and very commonly a subject pronoun like “Yo”, “Tú”, “Él” and so on.
“El verbo” refers to an action, a process or a state. With that said, verbs are things we do every day like “Dormir” (sleep), “Correr” (to run) or words we use to describe people or states like “Ser” (to be).
“El complemento” is what we place after the verb. In basic Spanish sentences, we will often add an object, that is food, places, etc., or an adjective like “bonito” and “interesante”.
Building simple sentences in Spanish: Examples and Practice
This group of basic sentences in Spanish will use verbs related to actions. The first two will use the names of people as the subject of the sentence. Notice that sometimes you will need to add prepositions and or an article after the verb depending on what verb you are using.
Carmen juega futbol.
Carmen plays football
Alberto va al cine.
Alberto goes to the cinema
Yo como uvas.
I eat grapes
It is really important that you make the subject agree with the verb. Otherwise, the sentence will sound odd. Remember that we have regular and irregular verbs in Spanish and it is really important to know the rules to conjugate regular verbs, as well which verbs are considered irregular in the language.
Ella estudia español.
She studies Spanish
Francisco cocina bien.
Francisco cooks well.
Ana es inteligente.
Ana is intelligent.
The second sentence above uses the adverb “bien” (well) and the adjective “inteligente” as the complement. As you probably know, ES is one of the forms of the irregular verb SER and this kind of simple sentences in Spanish are really common in everyday conversations. Before moving on to practice, keep in mind that you can make basic sentences in Spanish in different tenses including the present tense, past and future as shown in the three examples below.
Rubén escribió “Azul”.
Ruben wrote “Azul”
Arturo vendrá mañana.
Arturo will come tomorrow.
Ingrid llamó ayer.
Alan is intelligent.
We will see in future lessons that this type of sentences can be turned into more complete statements by adding adverbs and other parts of speech. For now, please make sure to test your understanding of this topic with the quiz below. ¡Hasta pronto!
Grammar quiz: Basic sentence structure in Spanish
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This short quiz will test if you understand the structure for basic sentences in Spanish. Follow the instructions for each exercise. Press START QUIZ when you are ready.
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Which are the two essential parts of a basic sentence in Spanish?CorrectIncorrect
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Find the right category for these words or phrases
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Find the basic sentences that are grammatically correct.CorrectIncorrect
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Mark the things that are true about basic sentences in SpanishCorrectIncorrect
Sentences in most languages do not a verb, not just in Spanish. Also, the predicate is more than just an adjective like “caro” (expensive) or an adverb like “realmente”, but it can be made out of prepositions, places, people’s names, time expressions and more.