Lesson 39: With, for, to - Prepositions

How to handle with him/her/you/me, for him/her/you/me and to him/her/you/me - or as these small words are known - prepositions

Now thanks to some clever thinking (not!) of the British Government I never did grammar at school which means when people through grammar type words like "preposition" around I have little idea what they are talking about!

But grammar is useful for learning another language so here is one word we do need to know. Prepositions refer to words like "to", "for" and "with" and this reference can be remembered because "pre" means "before" and all these small words always come before the person or thing you are talking about and they represent movement or a "position".

Con - with

We actually have 'con' in use within the English language - "Consequence" means "with sequence".

With its Spanish use though we have a fundamental difference on how we use it when talking about being with a person. As we saw in an earlier lesseon 'lo' can be used to express "him".

Spanish	English
Lo veo	I see him

But we also said this is only used when we are expressing "to him". "I see him" - "I am looking to him".

With 'con' there is no such movement going on so we say "with he".

Spanish	English
Con él	With him
Con ella	With her
Con ellos	With them (male/mixed group)
Con ellas	With them (female group)
Con nosotros	With us (male/mixed group)
Con nosotras	With us (female group)
Con usted	With you (formal)
Con ustedes	With you guys

Para - for

'Para' is used in exactly the same way (because all "prepositions" act the same way).

Spanish	English
Para él	For him
Para ella	For her
Para ellos	For them (male/mixed group)
Para nosotros	For us (male/mixed group)

There are two exceptions to the preposition rule of saying "for he" or "with he" and that is when using "me" or the informal "you".

Spanish	English
Para mi	For me
Para ti	For you (informal)

De - of

Spanish	English
De él	From him
De ella	From her
De mi	From me
De ti	From you (informal)
De ellos	From them (mixed/male group)
De nosotros	From us (mixed/male group)
De ustedes	From you guys

So we can start moving these into sentences straight away

Spanish	English
¿Es de ustedes?	Is it from you guys?
Es para ustedes	It is for you guys
Está con ustedes	It is with you guys

Yes - remember when we are talking about a location we are talking about a state which means we use 'Estar' and not 'Ser'.

Avoiding the preposition - Hacer and Decir recap

Now we know the literal prepositions but how often do they actually get used?

Spanish	English
Me hace un favor	He is doing me a favor
Le hace un favor	He is doing her a favor
Quiero decirle	I want to tell him/her
Le quiero decir	I want to tell him/her
Lo quiero decir	I want to say it
Les compro	I am buying for them

What you can see here is that in many Spanish sentences the use of 'lo' or 'le' actually replaces the need to say "for", "to", etc.

Now you can say both of these:

Spanish	English
Les compro	I am buying for them
Compro para ellos	I am buying for them

... and you would be fully understood but everyday Spanish uses the 'Les compro' form - in fact if you want a general rule to remember it is that everyday Spanish tries to avoid using prepositions!

Spanish	English
Me lo compra	He buys it for me
Me lo compran	They buy it for me
Me los compran	They buy them for me

... and Spanish will avoid the preposition to such an extent that some phrases can be very ambiguous ...

Spanish	English
Me lo compra	He buys it for me
Me lo compra	He buys it from me

... so the context of the overall situation is used to determine what is being meant and only if the context is not clear do we start using prepositions.

Generally we use prepositions a lot in English and you will see them in Spanish ... but far less.

Lesson 40: More prepositions - with, to, of, from