Prepositions in the Spanish language, like those in other languages, are a set of connecting words (such as con, de or para) that serve to indicate a relationship between a content word (noun, verb, or adjective) and a following noun phrase (or noun, or pronoun), which is known as the object of the preposition. The relationship is typically spatial or temporal, but prepositions express other relationships as well. As implied by the name, Spanish "prepositions" (like those of English) are positioned before their objects. Spanish does not place these function words after their objects, which would be postpositions.
Spanish prepositions can be classified as either "simple", consisting of a single word, or "compound", consisting of two or three words. The prepositions of Spanish form a closed class and so they are a limited set to which new items are rarely added. Many Spanish school pupils memorize the following list: a, ante, bajo, cabe, con, contra, de, desde, durante, en, entre, hacia, hasta, mediante, para, por, según, sin, so, sobre, and tras. The list includes two archaic prepositions — so (“under”) and cabe (“beside”), and it excludes vía (“by way of, via”) and pro (“in favor of”), two Latinisms that have been recently adopted into the language.
Some common Spanish prepositions, simple and compound, are listed below with their meanings.
A is most often translated as "to" or "at"; its main uses are the following:
Prepositional contraction: al (“to the”, “to”) is the contraction formed with a and el (“the”), the masculine definite article, yet the contraction is waived when the article is part of a proper noun:
Ante could indicate that something or someone faces a situation or an effect. For example (not tangible): Ante tal dificultad, optó por rendirse means: "Facing such difficulty, (he or she) opted to give up." A tangible example: El artista hizo una caravana ante la audiencia which means: "The artist bowed for (in front of) the audience."
Con is usually translated as "with", both in the sense of accompaniment (con mi hermano, "with my brother") and in the instrumental sense (con un martillo, "with a hammer"). Unlike other prepositions, con combines with the prepositional pronouns mí, ti, and sí in the forms conmigo (“with me”), contigo (“with you”), and consigo (“with her-, himself”). These forms are derived historically from forms with the Latin preposition cum postposed to its object: mēcum, tēcum, etc. In an Ibero-Romance ancestor of Spanish, before the time of written records, an etymologically redundant con was prefixed to these forms. Compare the concept of inflected preposition.
De is the most frequent preposition in Spanish, and vies with que to be the most frequent word in the language. It is most often translated in English by "of" or "from", but also denotes several other relationships as well.
The English possessive with apostrophe-s is translated by a construction with de:
Prepositional contraction: When de is followed by the masculine singular definite article el (“the”), together they form the contraction del (“of the”). However, de does not contract with the homophonous personal pronoun él ("him"), nor, in writing, with a proper noun; thus:
Typography: the uppercase form DE was configured as the siglum Đ — a typographic ligature adopted as a concise written and printed word-character, that originated as a lapidary scribal abbreviation.
The preposition de is part of many compound prepositions, such as dentro de (“within”, “inside of”) and en contra de (“against . . .”); see Section 2, below, for fuller description.
Both por and para are frequently translated into English as "for", and thus they pose a challenge for English-speaking learners of Spanish. In the broadest terms, por denotes cause or stimulus (with a retrospective focus), while para denotes destination or purpose (with a prospective focus). The following are common uses of these prepositions:
In fast spoken language, the preposition para often is clipped to pa/pa’, as in the colloquial Amos pa’lante. (“Let’s go forward.”)—compare the standard Vamos para adelante. (“Let us go forward.")
Según translates as "according to". With some uses of según, part or all of the object of the preposition is omitted and merely implied. Often the missing words can be taken as lo que ("what"):
Popular speech uses it alone, as an equivalent of "It depends."
Regional colloquial usage of the preposition según, with que, expresses evidential mood, indicating hearsay or non-commitment ("supposedly", "it is said").
Sin translates as "without":
When the object of the preposition sin is a clause introduced by que (alternatively interpreted as a compound conjunction, sin que), the verb in the clause must be in the subjunctive mood:
Some compound prepositions duplicate the meaning of a simple preposition, but often with a more formal tone or with greater specificity. For example, de acuerdo con ("in accordance with") is equivalent to según ("according to"). En dirección a ("in the direction of") is more ponderous than hacia ("toward"). The English counterpart of Spanish en may be either "on" or "in", while dentro de specifies "within". "Because of" is only one of several possible meanings of por, but por causa de conveys that meaning exclusively. In some cases the compound preposition denotes a literal spatial relationship, while the corresponding simple preposition expresses a figurative version of that relationship: thus, debajo de una mesa ("under a table") vs. bajo un régimen ("under a regime"), or delante de un edificio ("in front of a building") vs. ante un tribunal ("before a court of law").
The list of compound prepositions is much longer than that of the simple ones, and only some representative examples are listed here.
Spanish compound prepositions can be composed of:
Other Spanish compound prepositions include the following:
In certain cases, Spanish prepositions can be used serially, that is, two—or occasionally even three—in succession, as in the following examples:
In Spain the sequence a por, used mainly with verbs of movement, such as ir and salir, can be used to mean "in search of", or "to go fetch [something]". Many speakers consider it to be incorrect and prefer to replace it with por alone, but according to the Real Academia Española, there is no normative reason to condemn the use of a por.[1] In some contexts, a por expresses a clearer meaning than por:
This compound means "toward" in the context of an attitude or demeanor toward someone or something:
Other possible serial combinations of prepositions include the following:
The English language features three types of adpositions, prepositions (preceding), postpositions (following), and circumpositions (enclosing), which allow constructions such as “in the box”, “on the airplane”, and “out of Africa”, as in Spanish. However, the postposition “three years ago” is as impossible in Spanish usage as “ago three years” is in English. Thus, Spanish prepositions function exclusively as such, and these examples express equivalent concepts by using other mechanisms:
