Studying Spanish: January 2020

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Conjugating poner (he puesto)

la meta

goal

Me he puesto muchas metas.

I have set many goals.

From Living Language, Spanish, 2020, January 2.

My question/comment: I learned a new vocabulary term, la meta. My question today is regarding the verb, he puesto. What is the verb in Spanish? How is it conjugated? And what the heck is he? (Aack. I can only remember the present tense conjugation of verbs.)

The verb is poner (to put, to place). The tense is a compound tense: perfecto de indicative (present perfect indicative).

This tense expresses an action that took place at no definite time in the past. It is also called the past indefinite. It is a compound tense because it is formed with the present indicative of haber (the auxiliary or helping verb) plus the past participle of the main verb.

Conjugation of poner (to put, to place); gerund poniendo; past participle puesto

Presente de indicativo (EN present tense)		Perfecto de indicativo (similar to EN present perfect tense)
pongo	ponemos	he puesto	hemos puesto
pones	ponéis	has puesto	habéis puesto
pone	ponen	ha puesto	han puesto
From 501 Spanish Verbs, 1982, page xxxi.

primero/primera

first

Hoy es el primer día del año.

Today is the first day of the year.
From Living Language, Spanish, 2020, January 1.

My question: There is no -o or -a in primer. Why is primero/primera, an adjective, abbreviated here?

Some adjectives are shortened in certain situations.

The following adjectives drop their final -o before a masculine, singular noun:

uno (one)	un coche (one car)
bueno (good)	un buen viaje (a good trip)
malo (bad)	un mal muchacho (a bad boy)
primero (first)	el primer acto (the first act)
tercero (third)	el tercer presidente (the third president)
alguno (some)	algún día (some day)
ninguno (no)	ningún hombre (no man)
When a preposition separates the adjective from its noun, DON’T drop the -o/-a:
uno de tus primos (one of your courses)
Grande becomes gran (great, important, famous) before a singular masculine or feminine noun.
un gran profesor (a great teacher [male])
una gran profesora (a great teacher [female])
But it remains grande (large) after the noun.
un escritorio grande (a large desk)
una mesa grande (a large table)
Note the change of its meaning, depending on where it’s placed.
Ciento (one hundred) becomes cien before nouns and before the numbers mil and millones:
cien hombres y cien mujeres (one hundred men and one hundred women)
cien millones de euros (one hundred million euros) From Spanish All-in-One for Dummies, 2009, page 238.

Why this blog, Studying Spanish?

I almost have a degree in Spanish, but I feel that I’m a little rusty these days. I bought a Living Language 2020 Spanish calendar for way to study/review my Spanish knowledge every day. On day one, I had a question about an adjective in the sentence. I did some research to learn why the adjective was spelled as it was. My daughter’s VIP in her life also got the same calendar this year. He wants to improve his Spanish. I thought I’d share my questions and research with him. Rather than inundating this nice young man with text messages or emails, I thought I’d blog about my questions and my research. He, as well as others who might be interested, can read the blog at their leisure and perhaps learn a little more Spanish. Espero.