Nicole's question

Question

I, too, would like an answer to Nicole's question, please.

Answer

Hola Sherri,I looked into it when Nicole asked but I told her that in Spanish the order in a sentence is quite flexible and there is no specific rule for a specific order. As a general practise the order in a statement is Subject + predicate, for example: "Ella va al parque con sus amigas cada sábado." "Ella" being the subject and the rest including the verb "va" being the predicate. The verb is generally placed after the subject. But then you can swap things around, for example you can say "Ella va con sus amigas al parque cada sábado." Or if you want to put a bit more emphasis on "when" the action hapens, you could start with "cada sábado": "Cada sábado ella va al parque con sus amigas". Then as a general rule as well, interrogative sentences start with the verb in first place: "¿Va al parque con sus amigas cada sábado?, but again, it admits flexibility, so you could also say "¿Cada sábado va al parque con sus amigas? The order change normally takes place to put special attention on a specific element in the sentence. I also directed Nicole to our lessons on "position of direct and indirect object pronouns" where there are indeed rules about where they are placed. In our exercises, dictations, readers, fill in the blank..., you will see how sometimes the order expected (subject + predicate) sometimes changes. This is the way to see how flexible Spanish is in this respect. Sorry I can't be of any more help.SaludosInma

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Hola,This is not a very helpful answer. Your first three examples all work in the same way in English:She goes to the park with her friends every SaturdayShe goes with her friends to the park every SaturdayEvery Saturday she goes to the park with her friendsThe second one sounds a little odd to me, but the meaning is perfectly clear.Could we do other things in Spanish? Such as putting 'Ella' in a different position?Such as: Va al parque con sus amigas ella cada sábado.Va al parque ella con sus amigas cada sábado.My guess is that you could because 'ella' is a subject pronoun, so it *always* has to be the subject of the sentence.But what if we use a name instead of 'ella'? Could we put 'Maria' in several different places, like this:Maria va al parque con sus amigas cada sábado.Va al parque con sus amigas maria cada sábado.Va al parque Maria con sus amigas cada sábado.Again my guess is that we could because if 'Maria' was the object of the sentence we would have to use the personal 'A'.So, am I right, or am I wrong?Regards,Fred

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Hola FredTheoretically you could place the subject, that being ella or María, in any part of the sentence, obviously not breaking the groups of words - you can't do this for example:Cada María sábado va al parque....All the sentences you wrote are grammatically correct, however it would sound quite odd to place the subject at the very end or very far from the beginning of the sentence. Inma