A practical grammar library

Spanish grammar,
made usable.

Clear explanations for the moments Spanish stops mapping neatly onto English. Follow the examples, notice the choices speakers make, and try the idea in a sentence of your own.

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English explanations · Spain-oriented examples · Five practice questions per guide

The guide library

Pick a question.
Follow it further.

Start with a specific puzzle or move through the levels in order. Every guide includes original examples, common pitfalls and a short set of questions with explanations.

Start with the building blocks

Beginner

Get comfortable with everyday sentence shapes, useful descriptions and the questions that keep a conversation moving.

Ser vs estar: two ways to be

Spanish divides many meanings of English “to be” between ser and estar. The useful question is not simply whether something is permanent or temporary: ask whether you are identifying or characterising something, or locating it and describing its state.

The Spanish present tense in motion

The present tense is the workhorse of everyday conversation: it describes habits, facts, current situations and, with a time marker, some planned future events. Spanish verb endings carry the subject, so a subject pronoun is often unnecessary.

Reflexive verbs: where the action lands

A reflexive pronoun connects the action to the subject: I get myself ready, she brushes her own hair. Spanish uses the same small set of pronouns in several constructions, so not every verb that ends in -se describes a literal action done to oneself.

Spanish adjectives: agreement before placement

Spanish adjectives usually agree with the noun in gender and number. Their position is often after the noun, but placement can change what the speaker emphasises—and sometimes the meaning itself.

Spanish question words keep their accents

Spanish question words make a question precise: what, who, when, where, how, which or how much. Their written accent remains in both direct questions and indirect questions embedded inside a statement.

Make the details work

Intermediate

Add precision to time, pronouns and meaning as your Spanish starts to tell fuller stories.

Por vs para: follow the relationship

Both por and para can translate as “for,” but translation alone rarely tells you which one to choose. Notice whether the sentence gives a goal or destination, or instead explains a cause, route, exchange, or stretch of time.

A practical map of Spanish past tenses

Spanish past tenses do not form a simple one-to-one match with English. The key is how the speaker frames an event: as a completed occurrence, as background or habit, or as connected to a present time frame.

Preterite vs imperfect: tell the scene

When narrating in the past, the preterite and imperfect often work as a pair. One moves the story forward; the other gives the conditions in which the event happened.

Spanish future: two useful routes

Spanish often talks about the future without using a future-tense ending. Ir a + infinitive is especially common for intentions and plans; the simple future has its own uses for predictions, formal statements, and conjecture.

Spanish pronouns: who receives the action?

Object pronouns help Spanish avoid repeating names and nouns. The first step is to identify the role: what is directly affected, and to whom or for whom does the action happen?

Spanish irregular verbs have patterns

Spanish irregular verbs can feel like exceptions everywhere, but many fit a small number of recurring patterns. Learning the pattern alongside one useful example makes new forms easier to recognise.

Spanish gerund: an action in progress

Spanish gerunds often end in -ando or -iendo and appear with estar to describe an action in progress. English uses “-ing” in many more grammatical roles, so translating every “-ing” word as a Spanish gerund leads to awkward sentences.

Spanish commands: form, audience, placement

Commands are shaped by who you are addressing and whether the instruction is positive or negative. In Spain, learners regularly encounter familiar singular tú and familiar plural vosotros, alongside polite usted and plural ustedes.

Say exactly what you mean

Advanced

Work with nuance, speaker stance and the forms that shape a more careful point of view.

The Spanish subjunctive: a point of view

The subjunctive is a set of verb forms used in particular kinds of subordinate clauses. It is not a separate tense, nor a button that automatically switches on after a fixed list of words. Meaning and how the speaker frames the clause matter.

The Spanish conditional has more than one job

The conditional is often introduced as the tense for “would,” but it does more than describe imagined situations. It can soften a request, report what was future from a past viewpoint, or signal an estimate about the past.

Learn by noticing

Rules make more sense in a sentence.

Grammar is not a pile of labels. It is a set of choices speakers make to describe the world, connect ideas and place emphasis.

01

Read the contrast

Look at two nearby forms and ask what changes in meaning.

02

Borrow the pattern

Use a short everyday example as a frame for a sentence of your own.

03

Check your instinct

Try five focused questions and open each explanation when you are ready.

Take the next step

Put your Spanish in context.

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