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Spanish grammar wheels
Grammar Wheels
"I gave my three books to her at the market." — Change any wheels to see how Spanish encodes each shift.
Common questions about Spanish
What can I toggle on the Spanish wheel?
Subject (yo, tú, él/ella, nosotros, vosotros / ustedes, ellos/ellas), tense (past, present, future), aspect (simple, progressive 'estar -ndo', perfect with haber), mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative), polarity, voice, and a tú / usted register dial.
How does the wheel handle the subjunctive?
Switching mood to subjunctive triggers a 'que' clause and rewrites the verb stem (habla → hable, sabe → sepa, es → sea). Triggers like 'quiero que', 'es importante que', or 'aunque' surface alongside the inflected verb.
What changes when I flip between tú and usted?
tú takes second-person verb endings; usted takes third-person endings, so the same form is read differently depending on which is set. The wheel labels which pair you are looking at and adjusts the matching object pronouns (te vs le / lo / la).
Does the wheel handle vosotros versus ustedes?
Yes. Switching the plural-second-person dial swaps vosotros (Spain, with -áis / -éis endings) for ustedes (Latin America, with third-plural endings). The pronoun, the verb ending, and the matching object pronouns all move together.
How does the wheel show ser versus estar?
A stative or descriptive predicate routes through ser; a temporary state, location, or progressive routes through estar. Switching between them rewrites the copula and adjusts any adjectives whose meaning shifts depending on the choice.
Sources for Spanish
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Butt, John & Benjamin, Carmen (2004). A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish, 4th ed. London: Arnold.
- Whitley, M. Stanley & González, Luis (2007). Gramática para la composición, 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
- Real Academia Española & Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010). Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa.
- Penny, Ralph (2002). A History of the Spanish Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.