Spanish/Lesson 5

Unlike English, yes/no questions in Spanish are not usually formed by switching the position of subject and verb (if the subject is explicit). To recognize a sentence as affirmative or as a question one must pay attention to the intonation pattern. Unlike English, Spanish uses a reversed question mark (¿) at the beginning of a question:

become

For other type of questions Spanish uses the following question words (note that all of them have an accent in the word):

Here are some Spanish sentences where specific question words are used:

Questions can also be posed within a sentence:

Exercise: Questions

Like English, the Spanish possessive adjectives differ depending on the person they are referring to. Unlike English, the possessive article also changes depending on the number of items that one possesses (for example: mi libro = my book, mis libros = my books). It can also change depending on the gender of the item (for example: nuestro perro = our dog, nuestra casa = our house). The following table summarizes all Spanish possessive adjectives:

• Possessive Pronouns are not used when talking about body parts:
  

Exercise: Possessive Adjectives

Spanish uses three slightly different constructions for comparisons of equality. One for comparing verbs, one for comparing nouns and one for comparing adjectives/adverbs. The following examples show the three different possibilities:

When comparing nouns, the ending of tanto will be modified to tanta, tantos, or tantas in order to match gender and quantity of the noun. The general pattern for comparisons of equality is the following:

For comparisons of inequality, Spanish uses the same form for both nouns and adjectives/adverbs. There are two types of inequalities: más ... que (more than) and menos ... que (less than):

In general:

Superlatives in Spanish are similar to comparisons of inequality: They use más for the most, menos for the least. Then follows the adjective and finally there is a preposition (de):

Note that in some cases (la más inteligente) you can just write the article and omit the noun. The general pattern for Spanish superlatives is:

Exercise: Comparisons