Prepositions
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
in the
Spanish language
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 millio ...
, like those in other languages, are a set of
connecting words (such as ''con'', ''de'' or ''para'') that serve to indicate a relationship between a
content word Content words, in linguistics, are words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur. In a traditional approach, nouns were said to name objects and other entities, lexical verbs to indicate actio ...
(noun, verb, or adjective) and a following noun phrase (or noun, or pronoun), which is known as the object of the preposition. The relationship is typically spatial or temporal, but prepositions express other relationships as well. As implied by the name, Spanish "prepositions" (like those of English) are positioned ''before'' their objects. Spanish does not place these function words ''after'' their objects, which would be
postpositions
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
.
Spanish prepositions can be classified as either "simple", consisting of a single word, or "compound", consisting of two or three words. The prepositions of Spanish form a
closed class
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...
and so they are a limited set to which new items are rarely added. Many Spanish school pupils memorize the following list: ''a,
ante,
bajo,
cabe, con,
contra
Contra may refer to:
Places
* Contra, Virginia
* Contra Costa Canal, an aqueduct in the U.S. state of California
* Contra Costa County, California
* Tenero-Contra, a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland ...
, de,
desde,
durante Durante is both an Italian surname and a masculine Italian given name. Notable people with the name include:
Surname:
* Adriano Durante (1940-2009), Italian professional road bicycle racer
*Andrew Durante (born 1982), Australian football (soccer) p ...
,
en,
entre,
hacia,
hasta,
mediante, para, por, según, sin,
so,
sobre, and
tras.'' The list includes two
archaic prepositions — ''so'' (“under”) and ''cabe'' (“beside”), and it excludes ''
vía'' (“by way of, via”) and ''
pro
Pro is an abbreviation meaning "professional".
Pro, PRO or variants thereof may also refer to:
People
* Miguel Pro (1891–1927), Mexican priest
* Pro Hart (1928–2006), Australian painter
* Mlungisi Mdluli (born 1980), South African retired f ...
'' (“in favor of”), two
Latinisms
A Latinism (from lat-med, Latinismus) is a word, idiom, or structure in a language other than Latin that is derived from, or suggestive of, the Latin language. The Term ''Latinism'' refers to those loan words that are borrowed into another lang ...
that have been recently adopted into the language.
Some common Spanish prepositions, simple and compound, are listed below with their meanings.
Some frequent simple prepositions in Spanish
''a''
''A'' is most often translated as "to" or "at"; its main uses are the following:
* It indicates movement to a destination:
** ''Viajaron a Madrid.'' = "They traveled to Madrid."
** ''Llegaron a Madrid.'' = "They arrived in Madrid."
* It indicates a stationary point on a quantitative scale, as in telling time (but usually not a spatial location, which is normally expressed by ''en''):
** ''Llegaron a las dos.'' = "They arrived at two o'clock."
** ''Se venden a dos dólares la libra.'' = "They are sold at two dollars a pound."
* It introduces
infinitive
Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...
s after several common verbs, including ''ir'' ("to be going to
o something
O, or o, is the fifteenth Letter (alphabet), letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in ...
, a
periphrastic
In linguistics, periphrasis () is the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed by attaching an affix or clitic to a word. The resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one infl ...
future), ''volver'' ("to
o something
O, or o, is the fifteenth Letter (alphabet), letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in ...
again"), ''comenzar'', ''empezar'' (both "to begin"), ''ayudar'' ("to help"), ''aprender'' ("to learn"), and ''enseñar'' ("to teach"):
** ''Voy a enfadarme.'' = "I am going to become angry."
** ''Aprende no sólo a hablar sino también a escribir el castellano.'' = "Do not just learn to speak Spanish, but also to write it", "Learn not just to speak, but also to write Spanish."
* It introduces a direct object referring either to a person or a