CLASE 8. In the airplane. Desires and wishes – En el avión. Deseos. Gramática

Personal pronouns with prepositions

Personal pronouns yo and tú have special forms with prepositions:

Examples:

– ¿Este pantalón es para mí? – Are these trousers for me?
– Sí, es para ti. – Yes, they are for you.

– Quiero vivir solo. – I want to live alone.
– Sin mí no vas a poder vivir. – Without me you can not live.

Indirect Object Pronouns

Spanish, like English, makes a difference between Subject Pronouns and Object ones. But, unlike in English, in Spanish there are two types of Object Pronouns: Direct Object Pronouns and Indirect Object Pronouns, that we are going to study in this lesson:

¿Me compras este abrigo? – Will you buy me this coat?
¿Nos compráis estas camisas? – Will you (plural) buy us these T-shirts?
Le voy a escribir – I am going to write her/him

Object pronouns in Spanish should come immediately before personal forms of a verb or after infinitives. In the last case, it should be written together:

CORRECTO: Te compro este abrigo
INCORRECTO: *Compro te este abrigo

CORRECTO: Te voy a comprar este abrigo = Voy a comprarte este abrigo
INCORRECTO: *Voy te a comprar este abrigo

¡OJO! In English the first position in the sentence is normally occupied by the subject. So, many students tend to interpret

¿Me compras (tú) este abrigo?

like

*I buy you this coat , and this is incorrect!

In Spanish we first express to whom we will realize the action, then, the action itself, and then (in the verb ending), who will realize it.

Preposition a with animated objects

When the verb object is animated, it´s necessary to use before the preposition a. Compare:

Voy a ver ___ una película – I am going to see a moovie (moovie isn´t animated, so no special preposition is needed)
Voy a ver a una amiga – I am going to see a friend (as "a friend" is animated, you must use before a)

Conozco __ una cafetería – I know a coffee-shop
Conozco a una persona – I know a person

The preposition a often appears with these verbs:

querer a – to love somebody
conocer a – to know somebody, to get acquainted with somebody
ver a – to see somebody

Verbos con alternancia e-ie

When you have just started to study Spanish sometimes it seems that there are too many irregular verbs. Actually, there are only 10! But there exist a lot of verbs with small alternations. The most frequent case is vocalic alternation: the root vowel changes to another one when it´s stressed.

In this lesson let´s study “E-IE” group. In this case verbs change the root vowel E to IE when it´s stressed. It happens in all the forms except in nosotros/as, vosotros/as, as you can observe here:

There are plenty of very important verbs in this group such as: empezar (to start), fregar (to wash), encender (to put on), querer (to want, to love)...

La conjunción y con pronombres personales

When somebody and me do something, in Spanish we must say "somebody y yo":

CORRECTO: Juan y yo
INCORRECTO: Juan y *mí / Juan *conmigo

Logically, we must use the 1st Person Plural:

CORRECTO: Juan y yo vamos a recoger
INCORRECTO: Juan y yo *va a recoger

In order to say all of us, use entre nosotros or entre todos:

Papá y tú vais a hacer la compra, mamá y yo vamos a preparar la comida, y luego entre todos recogemos – Daddy and you are going to do the shopping, Mom and me are going to prepare the dinner, and then all of use will clean up the house