Talk:Spanish grammar

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I've blanked this list because I wrote it for the article before I separated it out into different articles. Feel free to add new to-do items. — Chameleon 13:01, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See history before 4 July 2004 at Spanish language

Talk up to 14 June 2005: archived at /Archive1.

[edit] Rules of the RAE, and cleft sentences

User:Hdezela mentioned "unused rules" of the RAE regarding inverted question and exclamation marks and accents on uppercase letters. I've reverted those edits since I think they were not accurate and would anyway need some source (besides anecdotic personal experience).

• It is true that many people today leave out the so-called inverted marks, but that's mostly in email and cell phone text messages; nobody's leaving them out in other forms of writing (newspapers, TV news, TV ads, CVs, books, pamphlets, etc.). When children leave them out, they're still corrected by the teachers, so the rule is not "unused".
• It is also true that many people leave out the accents on uppercase letters (and not only in all-uppercase words). In my experience, people often claim they thought it was correct to do so or even that there was a rule dictating it. But that again is my personal experience.

The other thing is the form of the cleft construction. In my dialect at least, nobody uses quien as a relative pronoun except in formal speech, and then they consistently use quien instead of el/la que regardless of the purpose of the sentence (informative or responsive). The only thing that may change is the order of the clauses: "Fue Juan el que perdió las llaves" vs. "El que perdió las llaves fue Juan", also vs. simply "Las llaves las perdió Juan". --Pablo D. Flores 15:20, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] La que lo se...

Examples La que lo sé soy yo and Yo fui el que me lo bebí seam to be terribly wrong to me, I've never heard it before. I believe that in singular the subordinate clause never matches the person (second examples).

Also, Es por eso por lo que lo hice is labeled among correct expresion, which might be, but Es por eso que lo hice as uneducated speech; call me uneducated, by I would defenitelly never use the first, and always use the second! Mariano(t/c) 07:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

The first examples do look rather wrong, but I have heard them. I'm not sure if they're prescriptively wrong. As for the others, Es por eso por lo que lo hice is correct but awfully long and affected; I've never heard it, or even seen it in print. Es por eso que lo hice is definitely not uneducated; que has been long used as an all-purpose relative pronoun. In any case, most people I know would use Por eso lo hice, with emphasis on por eso, to convey the same idea. —Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 11:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Realise that you are talking about spoken language where sentences tend to be longer and more redundant. Short and precise sentences are not unneducated as Mariano suggests. What make the speech sound 'educated' is the consistency in style, and the good use of the grammar. I would say the first sentence is wrong because "La que sabe" is actually in third person (singular), and the verb was conjugated in the first person "(yo) sé". The second sentence is wrong for similar reasons, confusion of first and third person. I would re-write those sentences as follows:

1. La que lo sabe soy yo
2. You fui el que se lo bebió

--tequendamia 12:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Conjunctions

Could someone please add a section or paragraphs about conjunctions? I know there are at least a couple forms of y, depending on what follows, though I don't speak Spanish. --LakeHMM 04:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)