Hey guys, God bless whoever has the patience to read and try and understand what i’m trying to say. I’m having a bit of trouble with spanish sentence structure. I’m going to give some example of spanish sentence structure in different tenses and if someone with a lot of patience could tell me if i’m getting the right word order, and if there’s any formula for word order in each of the tenses. I’m going to use the verb “to answer”.
no yo lo he contestado ~ I have not answered it
no lo me ha contestado ~ It has not answered me
no yo lo había contestado - I had not answered it
no lo me había contestado - It had not answered me
no yo lo contesto ~ I dont answer it.
no lo me contesta - It doesnt answer me
no yo lo hubiera contestado - I wouldn´t have answered it
no lo me hubiera contestado - it wouldnt have answered me
no contéstame! - dont answer me!
no contéstalo! - dont answer it!
I know that the majority of the time the subject (aka- yo) is not used that much but these types of word orders can be incredibly hard to make sense of when spoken at native speed. with all these little words like , yo, lo, le,he,la it can be impossible to catch in detail what is being said
Yo comes before no. Try putting “yo no lo he contestado” into a google search and then put “no yo lo he contestado”. Google is your friend.
In the negative, the command jumps over to the subjunctive. So while “contéstame” is fine, the negative must be “no me contestes”. Ditto for the last line.
At least a couple of times you have used lo without a corresponding direct object in your translation.
Hi Corin, I’ll try to help you, what kcb pointed out is correct.
(yo) no lo he contestado ~ I have not answered it
(él, ella, eso) no me ha contestado ~ It has not answered me
(yo) no lo había contestado - I had not answered it
(él, ella, eso) no me había contestado - It had not answered me
(yo) no lo contesto ~ I dont answer it.
(él, ella, eso) no me contesta - It doesnt answer me
(yo) no lo hubiera contestado - I wouldn´t have answered it
(él, ella, eso) no me hubiera contestado - it wouldnt have answered me
(tú) no me contestes! - dont answer me!
(tú) no (lo) contestes! - dont answer it!
What you are doing here is a very nice exercise of noticing. I encourage you to keep doing that while listening and reading a lot. What seems impossible today will be a piece of cake tomorrow, you probably have experienced that already. The problem is that I’m not sure these little things have a particular logic behind them. The good news is that by lots of listening you will get to a stage where sentences like “no yo lo he contestado” will sound as weird to you as “I not answered it”. And of course you’ll catch every detail in rapid-fire conversations too, it’s just a matter of time. Keep it up.
@Corin - if there’s any formula for word order in each of the tenses.
All I will add to the excellent answers the others have given you is that, yes, there is a formula. A book of grammar could help you here with the word order. Whether you want to look at a grammar book here is up to you. (Me, I would not.)
ok guys, thanks for your helpful answers! @Diego cheers man, I’ll keep your corrections on one side to check against any sentences of the same type i’m having trouble translating
