The document provides an overview of key aspects of English grammar, including nouns, articles, adjectives, verbs, and differences from Spanish grammar. It notes that English nouns do not have gender and the name does not make distinctions of case. It describes rules for pluralization of nouns and use of definite and indefinite articles in English. It also summarizes verb tenses including present, past, future, and conditional, and covers irregular verbs, infinitives, prepositional verbs, and conjugation of present tense verbs. Finally, it outlines several differences between English and Spanish grammar regarding nouns, adjectives, possessive constructions, word order, and punctuation/capitalization.
Grammar rules and differences between English and Spanish
1. English Grammar
The grammar of the English language presents many of the typical features of
European languages. The name presents difference between singular and plural. In
modern English, unlike its predecessor Old English, the name does not make
distinctions of gender or case. The differences of case and gender are restricted in
modern English to the pronoun, as it happens for example in the Romance
languages.
Nouns
Due to the similarities of Spanish and English origin there is a large number of nouns
that have similar characteristics, whether written or spoken. Such words are called
cognates, that is, terms with the same etymological origin, but with different phonetic
and often semantic evolution, and there are many in the language, such as
television-television, China-China, France- Francia, and America- América.
However, there are also numerous false cognates or false friends, terms with
similarities of appearance and meaning, that is, it seems to be related to another
word from a different language but that has a totally or partially different meaning.
Rules of pluralization of nouns:
For nouns ending in o (provided it is preceded by a consonant), s, ss, sh, ch, x and
z, are added -es
Articles
Like Spanish, articles of English are divided into definite and indefinite. The first refer
to a specific object and the second to the contrary.
2. The articles are prefixed to the noun: e.g. the car (the car). English has a single
definite article: the. This serves to refer to a specific object and has no gender (e.g.
pen is feminine and car is masculine in Spanish) or number as in Spanish.
The case of indefinite articles is similar. A and an do not work according to a gender
of the noun (female or male). The rules for use are governed by the sound with which
you start the word that follows them. If you start with the sound of a vowel, with the
exception of the "u", an is used. In any other case A (when the sound of a consonant
or "u") is used: a book (a book), a lamp (a lamp), an apple (an apple), an elephant
(an elephant), an iguana (an iguana).
If we compare these nouns with their respective articles, we note that elephant, apple
and iguana carry "an", since they all start with the sound of a vowel, unlike the other
examples.
Nominative Accusative Reflective
Possessives
Determinatives Nominal
I me myself my mine
you you yourself your yours
he him himself his his
she her herself her hers
it it itself its ----
we us ourselves our ours
youv you yourselves your yours
they them themselves their theirs
3. Adjectives
Adjectives also have neither gender nor number: although the noun is plural, the
adjective remains intact (green cars) Usually precede the noun that you want to
modify, so it would say "green cars" and not " cars green " as in Spanish. Adjectives
are divided into: comparatives and superlatives.
When the comparison "is" between one noun and another:
This type of comparison depends on the number of syllables of the adjective used
to compare. If the adjective has one to two syllables in English (for example happy),
the ending -er is added to the adjective, followed by than: She is happier than me.
When the largest magnitude of a noun is indicated.
Simply write the + (adjective + -est). For example: The biggest of all. This only
happens when the adjective has one to two syllables. If you have more, the adjective
is written normally, but first the word most is written (between the and the adjective).
Example: The most peaceful.
We must take into account irregular adjectives. For example: happy + -er = happier
(in this case the -y is replaced by -ier instead of -yer). This happens only with some
adjectives.
Verbs.
Verb tenses:
In English there are four fundamental times: present, past, future and conditional.
These four times are combined with three aspects (imperfective, continuous,
perfective), the possible aspect combinations are four ([-perf] [- cont], [- perf] [- cont],
[-perf] [- cont] and [-perf] [- cont]). The above time and aspect combinations result in
a significant number of verb tenses:
Simple that syntactically lack auxiliary e that include the following:
4. Simple non-progressive: simple present, which is recognized as not having TAM
suffixes in the root; simple past, which includes a past tense in the root, usually -ed
in regular verbs and can include -in and even umlaut in irregular or strong verbs;
simple future, regularly marked by an auxiliary (will, shall or its negative forms);
conditional, marked regularly by the auxiliary in the past tense would (or its negative
form).
Progressive (or continuous), equivalent in general to "auxiliary (to be) + gerund" in
Spanish, denote actions that are being carried out at the moment in which it is
spoken. Morphologically progressive times have the suffix -ing: progressive present;
past progressive
Compounds, which denote finished actions and therefore perfective aspect:
Non-progressive or non-continuous compounds: present perfect; perfect past;
perfect future.
Progressive, similar to the simple progressive: perfect progressive present;
progressive perfect past
Verbs in present
The verbs in the present stay the same as the infinitives, only the preposition to is
removed. The third person of the singular is the only one who is going to undergo a
change: you will add an ending -s. So the verb to eat (eat) will be as follows:
Pronoum: I, You, He, She, It,You, We, They
Verb: Eat, Eats.
Past tense
Verbs have different passages, depending on whether they are regular or not, which
are two:
5. Simple past, equivalent to any past in Spanish
Past of the participle, equivalent to the participle in Spanish.
The simple past is almost always accompanied by expressions of time such as:
'yesterday, last (month, week, year, etc.), a week ago. Both the past and the
participle of regular verbs ends in '-ed'. The rules to form the simple past of these
verbs are the following:
1) If the verb ends in '-y' after a consonant it changes the '-y' to 'i' and adds '-ed':
cry / cried.
2) If the verb is one syllable and ends in a consonant after a vowel, double the
last consonant and add '-ed', except when the verb ends in 'x': plan / planned,
but ax / axed.
3) If the verb has an accent on the final syllable, double the last consonant and
add '-ed': permit / permitted.
4) If the verb ends in '-e', just add '-d': love / loved.
5) Add '-ed' to all other verbs: play / played.
Irregular verbs.
The use of gotten has declined in the United Kingdom over the past few centuries,
but continues in the United States. Although in reality there are no definitive rules on
"what to add" or "what to remove" in a word that is from the group of "irregular verbs",
therefore for those who study the language they are always recommended to learn
them as they are. they write, because as mentioned before, there is no definitive
reference in the "irregular verbs".
6. Infinitive.
As for the infinitive verbs, they start with the word to, for example:
To bite - bite
To jump - jump
To speak - to speak
To walk – walk
Prepositional verbs
Many verbs have other meanings when they are added a preposition or an adverb
(around, down, in, out, up, etc.) afterwards. Also known as phrasal verbs, although
this term is falling into disuse, [citation needed] they change the definition of the verb,
or they give information about the address. For example:
Look after - take care
Look around - look everywhere
Look at - look (something, someone)
Look back - look back
Look for - search
Look over - review
Look up - search in dictionary / listing
Look up to - admire
Look down on – despise
Conjugation of the present time
In the present simple, the verb follows in infinitive, but the word to is eliminated in
the forms I, you, we and they.
Example:
I: I eat
You: You eat
7. We: We eat
They: They eat
However, in the forms it, he and she, a -s is added to the verb (without to).
Example:
He: I have stops (He stops).
She: She stops (She stops).
Differences in grammar in English and Spanish
Nouns in English have no gender.
This difference is one of the reasons why we say that English grammar is easy. It
does not matter if you talk about a dog or an apple, in English we will say the / a dog
or the / an apple, without stopping to think a lot. It is very complicated to learn the
genre in another language but in English we will not have that problem.
The only thing we should be careful with is that when we put a personal pronoun to
replace a noun. Keep in mind that he / she is only used for people and, rarely, for
animals. Everything else is it,
Adjectives go before the noun.
It is not a difference that makes the language very difficult, except when we have to
place several adjectives, do you know how they should be placed? The one that
describes a characteristic more intrinsic to the noun is the one that goes closest, the
one that expresses a more general opinion, the farthest. Although luckily, we will
rarely have so many adjectives together.
8. The Saxon genitive.
The Saxon genitive, which is the little that remains of the cases in modern English,
converts any noun into a possessive one. This in Spanish we usually do them by
putting a "de". Despite being a big difference, luckily it is not very difficult to learn.
The subject is essential.
Yes, that custom that we have in Spanish of omitting the subject when it is
understood can not be done in English. This is because the verbs in English do not
conjugate (well, hardly) and therefore do not indicate the gender or number of the
subject, so this information is only provided by the subject. If we do not want to
repeat, we must use a personal pronoun.
And the order of the sentence is practically unalterable.
This difference and the previous one are very related. As we said, the grammar of
English is very simple (although students do not look like it). Let's see, it does not
have conjugations in verbs, nor gender, nor declensions ... So, how do you give
meaning to sentences in English? Well, thanks to the order of its elements. Thanks
to an unchanging order we know, for example what is the subject and what is the
object in a sentence.
Capitalization and punctuation are used slightly differently
Finally, punctuation and capitalization are used in different ways in Spanish and
English. Naturally, they are subtle differences, but you have to take them into
account when writing. For example:
The days of the week, months and languages are written in capital letters in
English.
Admiration and question marks are only used at the end in English.
9. In English, when putting something in quotation marks "" the punctuation
marks remain inside, however, in Spanish they are put out
Be careful with numbers in English, decimals are indicated with period and
hundreds with commas!