Welcome to the third in our series on stupid and not-so-stupid questions about Spanish grammar.
What’s the Spanish word for DO?
One of the first things many people want to know when they start to study Spanish is how to translate the word ‘do’.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? However, this question is a bit trickier than our previous class on the Spanish word for ‘will’. That’s mainly because English is a little complicated. Don’t blame the Spanish language!
‘Do’ for questions
You want to form a simple question in Spanish, but you don’t know where to start? Look at how we translate these simple ‘do’ questions into Spanish:
- Do you want a beer?
¿(Tú*) Quieres una cerveza? - Do you know Barcelona?
¿(Tú*) Conoces Barcelona?
Aren’t those Spanish questions so much simpler than their English equivalents?
In fact, though it might take a little bit of getting used to: YOU DON’T TRANSLATE ‘DO’ in Spanish.
*In Spanish we don’t need to use the subject pronouns (‘tú’ in this case) when we form questions and phrases. We cover this in much more detail in our class on Spanish subject pronouns.
The form of Spanish questions.
Spanish questions are formed in exactly the same way as Spanish phrases. You just need to add question marks, including the crazy upside-down question mark at the beginning of the question. And when you’re speaking, you’ll change your intonation to make the distinction between a question and normal statements.
Look at how similar Spanish questions are to normal Spanish phrases:
- Conoces Madrid.
You know Madrid. - ¿Conoces Madrid?
Do you know Madrid?
Here’s another pair of examples:
- Quieres una bebida.
You want a drink. - ¿Quieres una bebida?
Do you want a drink?
What about ‘does’?
‘Does’ follows the same rules as ‘do’.
- ¿Ella conoce Barcelona?
Does she know Barcelona? - ¿Él quiere una cerveza?
Does he want a beer?
The second meaning of ‘DO’
Of course, we don’t just use ‘do’ to form questions, we also use it as a normal verb in loads of different expressions. In the second part of this class, which we’ll publish August 30th, 2018 (unless this week is really sunny!) we’ll see how to translate ‘do’ as in ‘to do the dishes’ ,‘to do my hair’, ‘to do my homework’, and similar phrases.
Hablarama’s Spanish resources
Go to the Hablarama home page to see all of the different Spanish courses which we publish online, including Travel Spanish, Basic Spanish and our practical course on Spanish phrases. Remember that all of our classes are completely free!
