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Spanish is a relatively Inflected language, with a two- Gender system and about fifty Conjugated forms per Verb , but no Noun Declension and limited Pronominal declension. The Real Academia Española traditionally dictated the rules of the Spanish Language , but since the 1960s its prestige has declined. Among the educated, the RAE's decisions are viewed as suggestions; among the uneducated, they are largely unknown. This article first describes the most formal and standard rules that modern Spanish works by, and then goes on to detail deviations from these that one might encounter in local or colloquial varieties of the language, such as ''pienso de que...'' or ''la dije que...''. VERBS ''Main articles: Spanish Verbs , Spanish Conjugation and Spanish Irregular Verbs .'' Verbs are one of the trickiest areas of Spanish for foreigners as they are fairly complex, with over fifty conjugated forms per verb. NOUNS ''Main article: Spanish Nouns '' Spanish has Noun s that express concrete objects, groups and classes of objects, qualities, feelings and other abstractions. As in English, all nouns are either countable or uncountable (not to imply that the distinction is always clear-cut) and, unlike English, also have a conventional grammatical gender (masculine or feminine). Countable nouns inflect for number (singular and plural). See the main article for further information. ADJECTIVES ''Main article: Spanish Adjectives '' Generally speaking, Spanish uses adjectives in a similar way to English and most other Indo-European languages. Unlike in English, Spanish adjectives usually go after the noun they modify, and they agree with what they refer to in terms of both number (singular/plural) and gender (masculine/feminine). See the main article for further information. DETERMINERS ''Main article: Spanish Determiners '' Spanish uses Determiners in a similar way to English. The main difference is that that they "agree" with what they refer to in terms of both number (singular/plural) and gender (masculine/feminine). Here are some determiners: ''este (esta, estos, estas); ese (esa, esos, esas); aquel (aquella, aquellos, aquellas); el (la, los, las, lo); un (una, unos, unas); mi (mis), tu (tus), su (sus), nuestro (nuestra, nuestros, nuestras), vuestro (vuestra, vuestros, vuestras); mucho (mucha, muchos, muchas); poco (poca, pocos, pocas); otro (otra, otros, otras)... See the main article for further details. PRONOUNS ''Main article: Spanish Pronouns '' Spanish has a range of pronouns that in some ways work quite differently from English ones. They include: ''yo, tú, vos, usted, él, ella, ello, nosotros, vosotros, ustedes, ellos, ellas, esto, eso, aquello'' etc. See the main article for further details. PREPOSITIONS ''Main article: Spanish Prepositions '' The Spanish language has a relatively large number of Preposition s, and does not use Postposition s. The following list is traditionally recited: ''A, ante, bajo, cabe, con, contra, de, desde, durante, en, entre, hacia, hasta, mediante, para, por, según, sin, so, sobre, tras.'' This list includes two archaic prepositions (''so'' and ''cabe''), but leaves out two new Latinisms (''vía'' and ''pro'') as well as a large number of very important compound prepositions. See the main article for further information. MISCELLANEOUS Cleft sentences A Cleft Sentence is one formed with the copular verb (generally with a Dummy Pronoun like "it" as its subject), plus a word that "cleaves" the sentence, plus a subordinate clause. They are often used to put emphasis on a part of the sentence. Here are some examples of English sentences and their cleft versions:
Spanish does not usually employ such a structure in simple sentences. The translations of sentences like these can be readily analyzed as being normal sentences containing relative pronouns. Spanish is capable of expressing such concepts without a special cleft structure thanks to its flexible word order. For example, if we translate a cleft sentence such as "It was John who lost the keys", we get ''Fue Juan el que perdió las llaves.'' Whereas the English sentence uses a special structure, the Spanish one does not. The verb ''fue'' has no dummy subject, and the pronoun ''el que'' is not a cleaver but a nominalising relative pronoun meaning "the {Link without Title} one that". We can freely play with the word order of the Spanish sentence without affecting its structure. For example, we can say ''Juan fue el que perdió las llaves'' ("Juan was the one who lost the keys") or ''El que perdió las llaves fue Juan'' ("The one who lost the keys was Juan"). As can be seen from the translations, if this word order is chosen, English stops using the cleft structure (there is no more dummy "it" and a nominalising relative is used instead of the cleaving word) whilst in Spanish no words have changed. Here are some examples of such sentences:
Note that it is ungrammatical to try to use just ''que'' to cleave such sentences as in English, but using ''quien'' in singular or ''quienes'' in plural is.
When prepositions come into play, things become complicated. Structures unambiguously identifiable as cleft sentences are used. The verb ''ser'' introduces the stressed element and then there is a nominaliser. Both of these are preceded by the relevant preposition. For example:
This structure is quite wordy, and is therefore often avoided by not using a cleft sentence at all. Emphasis is conveyed just by word order and stressing with the voice (indicated here within bolding):
In uneducated speech in Spain, or casual speech in Latin America, the complex cleaving pronoun is often reduced to ''que'', just as it is reduced to "that" in English. Foreign learners are advised to avoid this.
In the singular, the subordinate clause can agree with either the relative pronoun or with the subject of the main sentence. However, in the plural, only agreement with the subject of the main sentence is acceptable. Therefore: ;Singular
;Plural
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