Spanish Word Order

Although it is common to separate 'have' from past participles in English, the same shouldn't be done in Spanish.

As you read or listen to everyday Spanish, you will notice that many sentences don't follow the usual subject-comes-first pattern.

Some adjectives can change meaning depending on whether they placed before or after the noun they refer to.

How well do you know the adjectives whose means vary depending on where they're located? Find out by taking this quiz.

It is common in English to separate an auxiliary verb from the verb it is associated with. However, this practice should normally not be duplicated in Spanish.

Apposition is one way of organizing sentences to provide added explanations of nouns.

As a general rule, Spanish adverbs (and adverbial phrases) usually are placed near the word they modify.

It is often said that adjectives come after nouns in Spanish. But this isn't entirely true — some types of adjectives frequently or always come before the nouns they modify, and some can be placed either before or after nouns.

One of the first things you may be told when you start studying the Spanish adjective is that, unlike its English counterpart, it comes after the noun. But it doesn't take very much reading of Spanish to find out that the "rule" about word order is meant to be broken.

An explanation of how Spanish is more flexible than is English in terms of word order.

Although it isn't the norm, it is not uncommon for the subject of Spanish sentences to be placed after the verb. This lesson lists the most common instances where that occurs.