Uses of Spanish Preposition EN (in) - Basic Spanish Grammar

Lesson Transcript

¡Hola! Soy Romina Romaniello, tu profesora de español.

“Hi guys! My name is Romina Romaniello. I’m your Spanish teacher.”

Y hoy, voy a explicarte cómo utilizar la preposición en en español.

So today, I’m gonna teach you how to use the preposition en en español, in Spanish.

During this period, you’re gonna realize that most of the time, this pre-, preposition can be translated into English as in “in, at or during.” So, just as in English; in, at and during, we are talking about two things. We are either talking about time or we are talking about location.

Veamos primero cómo utilizamos la preposición en para hablar del tiempo en español.

“So let’s focus first in how we use the preposition en in Spanish to talk about time.”

I’ll give you a couple of examples…

En el año 2003, Carolina se mudó a Madrid.

I’m sure, you can guess the meaning of this sentence.

Basically, we are just saying, “In the year 2003, Carolina moved to Madrid.”

So here, the preposition en is showing the time, exactly the year where this happened.

En pascuas, viajé a Chile.

So, in this example, again, I’m using the preposition en to talk about the time that I traveled to Chile during Easter. So you can see that in this case, I’m not gonna be translating the preposition en as in “in,” as in the previous example. Instead, I’m gonna translate as “during.”

“During Easter, I traveled to Chile, Chile.”

I guess, you can also use the preposition en in English, but I’m not sure about that. I think it’s okay if you say, “I traveled to Chile in Easter.” I think that, that, that’s grammatically correct as well. So yeah, it, it really depends on how you wanna translate this phrase.

En Diciembre, empecé la dieta.

So here, we’re using the preposition in next, en, sorry, followed by the amount, okay? So, it’s perfectly fine in Spanish to say, en plus a month, okay?

En Enero

En Febrero

En Marzo

So, the example that we were saying just now was, I started my diet… I started a diet on X month. Just be mindful that this is not applicable for the days of the week, okay? You can’t say, “en Lunes,” “en Martes,” okay? In those cases, you’re not supposed to use the preposition en, you just say, el Lunes, el Martes, okay? Just be aware of it.

So, when we’re talking about time with the preposition en, we can also use it to talk about something that is gonna happen in the future, not just in the past. In the, in the previous examples I was just giving you, I was talking about things that happened in the past, okay? A diet that I started a couple of months ago or a country I travelled to last Easter, okay?

But what about things that are gonna be happening in, in the next, I don’t know, 5 minutes, in the next hour or so? What, what… How can we use the preposition en when talking about future events?

En cinco minutos nos vamos al cine.

So, in this example, I’m just using the pre-, preposition en to tell you that in 5 minutes, we’re leaving to the cinema. We’re, we’re going to watch a movie in about 5 minutes.

En dos años hablaré español con fluidez.

So here, I’m saying, “In 2 years’ time, I’m gonna be speaking Spanish fluently.”

The preposition en, when talking about time, can also be used to mark the direction of an action. I’ll give you an example…

El boleto de estacionamiento se vence en media hora.

In this example, I’m saying that the parking ticket lasts only for half an hour, okay? En media hora. So here, I’m using the preposition en to talk about the duration of a particular action.

Okay, so that’s how we use the preposition en to talk about time. Let’s now focus about location. So when it comes to location, we can be talking about geographical location, okay? We can be talking about, I don’t know, cities, towns or countries or continents, whatever, anything that is geographical, anything that is, that it actually exists, right?

So let’s say, for example…

Buenos Aires está en Argentina.

So here, la preposición en means “in.” Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, is in Argentina.

María está de vacaciones en Colombia.

So here, we’re saying that Maria is having a holiday in Colombia, is currently in a holiday in Colombia. So, of course, when we talk about location, it doesn’t necessarily mean only geographical cities or, or country, or countries. It can also mean just any place, really.

La cama está en la habitación.

So here, we’re saying, the bed is in the bedroom, okay?

Me olvidé el paraguas en el carro.

So here, we’re saying, I forgot the umbrella in the car. So, basically here, we are talking about the inside of the car. In this example that I just mentioned, we can replace, in Spanish, the preposition en by the preposition dentro, okay? Instead of saying en del carro, I can say dentro del carro. In this context, both en and dentro mean “inside.”

Las flores están en la mesa.

So here, we’re saying, the, the flowers are on top of the table. In this case, we can also replace the preposition en by the preposition sobre.

Las flores están sobre la mesa.

Sobre and en, in this case, both mean “on top of.”

Sometimes, when we’re talking about space, it’s not necessary, necessarily something that is an actual space, that exist in reality. It can be a metaphorical one, as well.

Por ejemplo…

Tú estás en mi corazón.

So here, I’m saying, you are in my heart, okay? You’re not literally in my heart, otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to breathe and live right now, I’m probably dead, but it, it just basically means that I’m using the preposition en with the sense of location, but this location doesn’t really exist. It’s just metaphorical and so romantic, qué romántico.

Muy bien amigos.

Así es cómo utilizamos la preposición en en español.

“So this is how we use the preposition en in Spanish.”

I really hope that you enjoyed today’s lesson and, as usual, please let me know in the comments below if you have any questions or if there’s anything that you would like me to clarify. I can also ask you that if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to get notifications when we receive, when we upload new videos. Mucha gracias, again, for watching this video. Thank you so much for watching this video and I will see you in our next class. Nos vemos en la próxima clase. ¡Adiós!

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