How to Make Basic Sentences in Spanish

¡Hola! Welcome to a new lesson. In this lesson, we will focus on the basic concepts to form or make basic sentences in Spanish. We will study different parts of speech, provide interesting examples and also give you the chance to practice the structure of Spanish sentences with several interactive exercises. Let’s start…

What are the parts of a basic sentence in Spanish?

The word “ORACIÓN” is used to refer to “a sentence” in Spanish. Interestingly, this word can also be used as both “Prayer” and “Sentence”. Grammatically speaking, “una oración” is a syntactic structure formed by a subject and a predicate. It may sound strange, but the definition applies to both English and Spanish. In general terms, sentences in Spanish are formed by placing a subject first, then adding a verb and finally adding a complement. Also, do not forget to add a period at the end of your sentences and begin with a capital letter.

La oración simple en español - How to make basic sentences in Spanish — La oración simple en español

El sujeto:

“El sujeto” is the subject of the sentence. As you can see, grammar terms in both languages usually sound alike. Just like in English, the subject will be the name of a person, a place, an object and very commonly a subject pronoun like “Yo”, “Tú”, “Él” and so on.

Using Personal Pronouns in Spanish as the subject of sentences

Interactive exercise No. 1

Read these basic sentences and write the subject in the boxes. Remember to use capital letters, tildes, and the right punctuation where necessary.

El verbo:

“El verbo” refers to an action, a process or a state. For instance, verbs are things we do every day like “Dormir” (sleep), “Correr” (to run) or words we use to describe people or states like “Ser” (to be). Next, we show you a list of really common verbs in Spanish through this nice collection of images. In order to use them in sentences, they will often be conjugated to fit the subject and tense that you choose.

Interactive exercise No. 2

Click to highlight the main verb in each of these simple sentences.

El complemento:

“El complemento” is what we place after the verb. In basic Spanish sentences, we will often add an object, that is food, places, etc., or an adjective like “bonito” and “interesante”.

Interactive exercise No. 3

Mark the words that represent the complement in these basic Spanish sentences.

How to make sentences in Spanish: Examples and Practice

A simple sentence in Spanish is one that has only one verb. Like all other sentences, simple sentences have a subject (pronoun or noun that could be omitted) and a predicate (verb and complement), as shown in the following image:

basic Spanish sentence structure and examples of sentences with their subject and predicate

The following group of basic sentences in Spanish will use verbs related to actions. The first two will use the names of people as the subject of the sentence, which you could replace with personal pronouns like the ones in the picture above. Know that sometimes you will need to add prepositions and/or a definite/indefinite article after the verb, depending on what verb you are using.

Carmen juega futbol.

Carmen plays football

Alberto va al cine.

Alberto goes to the cinema

Yo como uvas.

I eat grapes

It is really important that the subject agrees with the verb in the sentence. Otherwise, the sentence will sound odd. Remember that we have regular verbs and irregular verbs in Spanish, and it is extremely necessary to know the rules to conjugate regular verbs, as well which verbs are considered irregular in the language.

Ella estudia español.

She studies Spanish

Francisco cocina bien.

Francisco cooks well.

Ana es inteligente.

Ana is intelligent.

More examples of basic sentences in Spanish

As we have seen in the previous examples, the main verb for every sentence must be conjugated correctly for the chosen tense. The following illustration shows a set of examples of sentences in Spanish in the present, past, future, and tenses, following this basic structure:

The second sentence above uses the adverb “bien” (well) and the adjective “inteligente” as the complement. As you probably know, ES is one of the forms of the irregular verb SER and this kind of simple sentences in Spanish are really common in everyday conversations. Before moving on to practice, keep in mind that you can make basic sentences in different tenses including the present tense, the past tense and future tense as shown in the three examples below.

Rubén escribió “Azul”.

Ruben wrote “Azul”

Arturo vendrá mañana.

Arturo will come tomorrow.

Ingrid llamó ayer.

Alan is intelligent.

Interactive exercise No. 4

Drag the parts of each sentence, placing the subject first, then the verb, and finally the complement of each Spanish sentence. Then, check your answers.

Interactive exercise No. 5

That’s all for now. We hope you learned a couple of things from this lesson. In future lessons, we will cover other types of sentences in Spanish and more essential grammar topics in more detail. See you soon!