Why does "Me" come before ...

Why does "Me" come before ...
 

"... quedare' tres noches" when translating the sentence, "I will stay three nights".

:confused:

Quedar and quedarse have really different meanings. Quedarse is the reflexive version of the verb quedar and it usually means to stay. (me quedo en la casa/I'll stay at home.) The non-reflexive quedar can mean to be left. (quedan trés días /there's three day left.) There are other meanings as well, but be aware that there is a drastic difference in meaning between quedar and quedarse.

I am using Duolingo for practice, and they have quedare' (I am using e' to stress the e). They have made mistakes before; could this be a mistake?

When you edit text for a post here in Tomísimo, you can type the accented letters and other Spanish characters correctly by selecting them from the "Accents" drop down list: that way you can enter quedaré instead of resorting to quedare'.

As to your question: are you saying that Duolingo has:

Quedaré tres noches = I will stay three nights

or are you saying that it has:

Me quedaré tres noches = I will stay three nights

Exactly as Poli said. Welcome to the study of "quedar/quedarse", that can be as varied as English verb "get".

In practical Spanish "quedaré tres días" (without that "me") suggests, for instance, three days is what's left to me to stay in an office I was appointed for, and I will probably will be thrown out once that moment comes.

"Me quedaré tres días" = I will stay three days

Learn it as an expression. In the future you'll get a handle on the grammar.

More on "quedar".

It has "Me quedaré tres días" = I will stay three nights.

@Spanish Objective: For this case, the verb "quedar" needs the pronominal particle "se". When you have a non conjugated verb, the particle is added to the end of the verb as a suffix: "quedarse".
But when the verb is conjugated, then the particle agrees with the pronoun and it is placed, separated, before the verb:
- (yo) me quedo
- (tú) te quedas
- (él/ella) se queda
- (nosotros) nos quedamos
- (vosotros) os quedáis
- (ustedes) se quedan
- (ellos/ellas) se quedan