Spanish Prepositions List | Lingoda Live Spanish Education

What are Prepositions?

Prepositions within the Spanish language are words which connect either a noun, adjective or verb to the object of the preposition, which is usually a noun or pronoun. More specifically, it describes a relationship between the two parts of a sentence and this relationship usually refers to things like movement, location, direction or time.

Within the study of language, prepositions are notoriously tricky, because there are no simple solutions. Instead, they must be learned, understood and memorised individually. With Spanish, this can be made somewhat less daunting by dividing them into two distinct groups: simple prepositions and compound prepositions.

List of Common Spanish Prepositions

In Spanish, the easiest way to group prepositions together is as simple prepositions and compound prepositions. Simple prepositions consist of a single word, while compound prepositions consist of two or three words. Some of the most common simple and compound prepositions are listed below, along with examples of usage.

Simple Prepositions

a	to, at	Ellos viajaron a francia	They travelled to France
con	with, to	Ven con nosotros	Come with us
de	of, from, about	Capital de España Ella es de Madrid	Capital of Spain She is from Madrid
en	in, on, at, by	En un minuto Viajo en coche	In a minute I travel by car
hacia	towards, to	Corrió hacia mí	He ran towards me
para	for	Tengo dinero para pagar la cena	I have money to pay for dinner
por	for	Intercambié el pan por la leche	I exchanged the bread for the milk
sin	without	Té sin azúcar	Tea without sugar

Compound Prepositions

antes de	prior to, before	Antes de 1980	Before 1980
con respecto a	with respect to	Con respecto al anuncio de empleo	With respect to the job advert
debajo de	underneath	Debajo de la mesa	Underneath the table
delante de	in front of, before	Delante de la chimenea	In front of the fireplace
Fuera de	Outside of	Quiero viajar fuera de Europa	I want to travel outside of Europe
Lejos de	far from	Estaba lejos de casa	I was far from home)

The Importance of Learning Spanish Prepositions

Taking the time to learn the different Spanish prepositions is incredibly important, because they allow Spanish speakers to construct sentences properly. Moreover, prepositions are utilised all the time; in fact, the prepositions “a” and “de” rank as two of the most frequently used Spanish words of all.

One of the keys to understanding Spanish prepositions is to come to terms with the fact that they do not work in the exact same way as English prepositions, so they cannot be substituted one-for-one. It is, therefore, impossible to become fluent in Spanish without truly getting to grips with these words and their functions.

Common Mistakes with Spanish Prepositions

Like with most other languages, Spanish prepositions do not correlate directly with English prepositions. Yet, one of the most common mistakes made by Spanish language students is to simply carry out a one-for-one translation, resulting in incorrect preposition usage or placement.

In terms of getting prepositions mixed up, a frequently encountered problem involves the Spanish words “para” and “por”, which both roughly translate to the English word “for”, but have different uses. The rule here is that “para” refers to destination or purpose, while “por” refers to cause or motion.

Furthermore, the Spanish language does not have postpositions, which function in a similar way to prepositions, but are placed after the object. As a result, when translating a postposition from English to Spanish, the word becomes a preposition, occasionally resulting in a word order that may seem unusual to an English speaker.