Today I will remind you why grammar is important. Yesterday a student asked me if it’s correct to say Me llama Lucía y Me llamo Pedro. Then I asked him: -«why do you change the ending in Lucía?» This student replied: -«because it’s a girl and Pedro is a boy». Then I quickly understood that this student has a grammar problem.
Look! When we’re talking about nouns, we’re talking to about gender a number because it’s not the same to say:
–Mi hermana (my sister)
Or to say:
–Mis hermanas (my sisters).
In the first case, hermana is a feminine and singular noun and, in the second case, hermanas is feminine and plural. For that reason, the article changes too. The article and the adjective which go with a noun agree with them in gender and number. We use la to be with a feminine and singular noun and las to be with a feminine and plural noun.
But we haven’t talked about verbs yet, is that correct? And why? Because verbs only have person (1st, 2nd or 3rd) and number (singular and plural), but not genre. This is the reason why we don’t change the ending due to the genre, because verbs have NOT genre. Also, this is the reason why we change the ending due to the person (1st, 2nd and 3rd person) and the number (singular and plural).
If we catch up the question of my student, we can answer:
Lucía and Pedro are 1st person singular in this case (“me llamo”), for that reason, the ending of the pronominal verb “llamarse” for 1st person is me llamo and you mustn’t think about the genre of the subject because it doesn’t matter in terms of verb forms.
I hope it helps! Let me know in the comment section below or send me an email to belriesco@outlook.com . Finally, share it with your family or friends!
Letras en Español – Ms. Riesco Almeida©
Letras en español 