Lesson 56: Prepositions (Who, that, for, with, etc.) in detail

Time to look at how we can use prepositions (words like Who, that. for. with, etc.) with the different tenses and sentence forms we have learned so far.

Let's just recap some of the prepositions we have come across already:

Spanish	English
Para	For (you)
Por	For (two hours)
De	From / of
Con	With
En	In/on

In Spanish these words generally tend to cluster at the begining of the sentence whereas in English we often find them at the end:

Spanish	English
¿De dónde eres?	Where are you from?
¿A dónde vas?	Where are you going to?

Spotting these differences when they happen is a great way of remembering certain phrases. But obviously this isn't an absolute rule.

Spanish	English
Vamos a estados unidos	We are going to the United States

Finding verbs from words

Now I've mentioned before that its a really useful mental exercise when language learning to take a word and work out the releated verb and here we have an opportunity - 'unidos' ("united").

• Well first of all we know its plural so we can take off that last 's' - 'unido'
• Then we know that 'er' and 'ir' verbs replace the 'ir'/'er' with 'ido' so "to unite" is either 'uner' or 'unir'
• The correct option is 'unir' but you can't work that out. However as you learn more and carry out mental exercises like this your intuition will grow and you will find yourself being correct in your final step guessing more and more.

Multiple ways to say the same thing

In English we have a tone of ways to say the same thing:

• The girl that I work with
• The girl with whom I work
• The girl I work with
• The girl with which I work

Its similar in Spanish:

Spanish	English
La chica con que trabajo	The girl that I work with
La chica con cual trabajo	The girl with which I work
La chica con quien trabajo	The girl with whom I work

But we'll stick with the most popular version for now - 'que' - and just know that when we hear slight variations we can understand them.

Spanish	English
Es la chica con que trabajaba	It is the girl that I was working with
La chica con que iba a la fiesta	The girl that I was going to the party with

Cual

We mentioned this above in the context of "the girl with which I worked" but it also has the same alternative uses as in English.

Spanish	English
¿Cúal quieres?	Which (one) do you want?
No se cúal quiere	I don't know which (one) he wants
No se cúal quiere ver	I don't know which (one) he wants to see
No se con cúal quiere hacerlo	I don't know with which (one) he wants to do it

Quien

We covered this - the word for "Who" - briefly before.

Spanish	English
¿Quien va?	Who is going?
¿Quienes van?	Who is going?

If you've been plugging through these lessons the two different ways of saying "Who is going?" are probably obvious - are we expecting to hear about a single person going or more than one person?

Similarly certain words are often dropped if there is a good context. We do this in English when someone knocks at the door and we say "Who is it?" we mean "Who is it that is there?" but we can drop the last part of the sentence because from the context of the situation it is clear what our "Who is there?" refers to.

Spanish	English
¿Quien está aquí?	Who is here?
¿Quien está?	Who is here?
¿Estás?	Are you there? (informal)

OK - mega sentence to break down: "I don't know with who I have to do it"

• "I don't know" = 'No se'
• "with who" = 'con quien'
• "I have to" = 'tengo que'
• "do it" = 'hacerlo'

Spanish	English
No se con quien tengo que hacerlo	I don't know with who I have to do it
No se para quien tengo que hacerlo	I don't know for who I have to do it
No se por quien tengo que hacerlo	I don't know because of who I have to do it

And as always just a reminder that even if you like to add the 'lo' after the two form you might also here it before the 'changed' verb and both are fine.

Spanish	English
No se por quien lo tengo que hacer	I don't know because of who I have to do it

Lesson 57: The many uses of 'Lo'