Spanish Sentence Structure

[HSMike2]

This forum has helped me a lot every time I've had a question, so thanks for all the help.

I hit a wall learning Spanish. I've pretty much got the basic words remembered now and I wanted to move forward, I didn't understand verbs so I began learning about them and hit a wall, so I stopped learning Spanish. I then came back to it and learned about them. I understand them now, although not 100%.
However, if I see them in a sentence I can easily translate them now.

Anyway, a month or two ago I hit another wall regarding sentence structure.
I'd be reading Spanish and it would make absolutely zero sense. When I would be on learning websites, they would be giving me sentences like "The colour is blue" etc.

So basically, they were given me sentences that were worded the same way as in English and when I thought I was improving, I switched to google.es and checked out a few websites and my mind was blown because I couldn't understand a single sentence. I tried looking up "Spanish sentence structure" but it would give me stuff that was far too complicated for me and I didn't understand a word.

I was wondering if anyone knew a website(s) that could help with that or even spread some knowledge themselves in a simplistic way. I'm an idiot and I need things explained in a simple/basic way. I was reading this article the other day about why you wouldn't word a sentence like "My dad's car" as you would in English and it made no sense because he just made it far too complicated.

I looked below at the comments and a guy goes "cliffs; They don't use 's in Spanish so you can't say "My dad's car" you can only say "The car of my dad" . That made complete sense to me because he made it short, simple and straight to the point. So yeah, I was wondering if anyone else could help me out too? Thanks in advance.

[Rusty]

We all learn things a little differently. What works for some may not work for others.
So, it's hard to say what website will click with you.

The my-dad's-car structure can be explained using grammatical terms, but I can see that this wouldn't help you understand the concept. What you should probably do is to classify the structure. Call it the show-possession structure, if that makes sense to you. Then you can search on the internet using terms like "show possession" and "Spanish" and get some help that makes sense to you. You might learn some of the grammatical terms along the way, but at least you'll understand the concept and will be able to use what you learn.

This site has a number of members that can help you understand structures that throw you for a loop. Post the structure with enough context (surrounding words or background), and we'll be able to explain it.

[AMG]

Hello. You could start posting your questions here so we could help you!

[HSMike2]

Thanks for the help. I typed in what you wrote Rusty about show possession in Spanish and a website came up that helped me with a few sentences I was stuck on when it comes to the usage of de.

It's really the small things, I had a lot of examples but I've forgotten them, I will post them later on though.

Here's a small one though that I just found when I changed Steam(PC gaming software) to Spanish:

Actividad de los amigos (Friend activity, showing their last played game)

Shouldn't it be: Actividad de mis amigos

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

The possessive is needed there only if you mean to emphasize the fact that they are your friends and nobody else's, or if you and them have a close friendship. Since social networks don't guarantee that you have a real friendship with most people in your lists, "los amigos" works fine, as it's general enough.

[AMG]

Hey, to learn more about pronouns, I recommend you these pages: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~annw/pronombres.htm and http://eljuego.free.fr/Fichas_gramat..._posesivos.htm Check them and tell me if it worked

[HSMike2]

Thanks for the replies. I'll look at the websites you posted in the morning, they look good though. I'm having trouble with pretty much all the grammar or I'm just not 100% sure on it.

I'm never sure how to translate sentences to English in my head. For example when you see the word 'se' do you automatically translate it to he/she/it or do you just skip that word and then check the rest of the sentence and then come back to it?

Example:

lo se comprende

When I see that. I automatically read it such as 'it he understands'(he understands it) but it can also mean 'it she understands'(she understands it) or 'it it understands'(I guess that would be translated as 'It is understood'?) I'm just never sure if I'm translating it correctly.

Another example:

I donate it to them

Yo se lo dono.

I have no idea how that's translated.

In my head this is how I'm translating it as I'm reading it because I'm thinking in English:

I he it donate

I just read that if there's another pronoun beginning with l after the le/les then you change it to se. So, do you guys automatically know the sentence is talking about them or is it still a possibility it's talking about he/she/it?

I'll try and explain myself a bit more but, if you see the sentence 'Yo se lo dono' do you automatically know it's 'I donate it to them' or do you still need to go "Hmm, is he donating it to him/her/it/them?" in your head.

Thanks for all the help.

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by HSMike2

I donate it to them

Yo se lo dono.

I have no idea how that's translated.

In my head this is how I'm translating it as I'm reading it because I'm thinking in English:

I he it donate

Back in the twelveth century they used to say:

Yo le lo dono (to him, to her) / Yo les lo dono (to them)

But they found those "le lo" and "les lo" very cacophonous and by the fifteenth century everybody was saying "se lo" with "se" meaning "le" or "les". This has nothing to do with the use of "se" in other verbal structures, so your confusion about it is understandable. The matter here is that "se" doesn't convey singular or plural per se. This is perceived by the native speakers so many of them wrongly modify the sentence to add that information and then

The money. I donate it to them

becomes

El dinero yo se los dono (El dinero yo les lo dono -12th century style-)

This happens every day in many regions of the Spanish speaking countries.

As a general aid:

(Yo) se [lo] dono
(Tú) me [las] compras
(Ellos) te [los] entregan

This is parsed the same way. The part in parenthesis may be omitted because the subject is revealed by the conjugation:

(who) to_whom [which_thing] what_action

The piece between brackets may be omitted because the thing may be tacitly understood. In such case "se lo dono" becomes "le dono" because the cacophony cease to exist.

Anyway, Spanish is very flexible in clause order -not so much in word order inside a clause-. So you may say

El dinero yo se lo dono
El dinero se lo dono yo
El dinero lo dono yo a ellos.
Yo les dono el dinero.
Yo el dinero se lo dono
Yo el dinero a ellos se lo dono
Yo a ellos el dinero se lo dono

There are some duplicates there -"el dinero" and "lo" in the same sentence, "a ellos" and "se" in the same sentence-. That's the price to pay for such flexibility. And different nuances in each of these sentences is the gain (but that's way more an advanced topic). Let's concentrate now in not hitting walls