La concordancia is the harmonious combination of elements in a sentence. There are two kinds of agreement (concordancia) in Spanish: la concordancia nominal (noun agreement) and la concordancia verbal (verb agreement). Let’s check out some rules for la concordancia verbal.

1. When we have only one subject, the verb agrees with it in number and person. In the following sentences, the subject is in bold.

El niño duerme tranquilo.
[The boy sleeps soundly.]

Pasaron por mi casa los abuelos de Nacho.
[Nacho’s grandparents came by my house. – Remember that in Spanish we can invert the positin of subjects.]

Las niñas jugaban a la rayuela.
[The girls were playing hopscotch.]

2. When we subject is compuesto (two or more subjects) the verb must be in the plural form.

Salieron juntos tu papá y mi tío.
[Your dad and my uncle left together.]
tu papá y mi tío = ellos (3rd person plural)

Tú y yo no tenemos nada en común.
[You and I have nothing in common.]
tú y yo = nosotros (1st person plural)

Juan y tú serán buenos amigos.
[Juan and you are probably good friends.]
Juan y tú = ustedes (3rd person plural – Latin American Spanish)

In Spanish it is very common to see sentences where the verb agrees with nosotros(as) and vosotros(as)/ustedes, but these ones do not come in a pronoun form, but as nouns. Here are some examples:

Los artistas tenéis una vida muy agitada.
[You artists have a very hectic life.]

Los médicos ganáis mucha plata pero los profesores somos muy mal remunerados.
[You doctors make a lot of money but we, teachers, are highly underpaid.]

In our next post we will see some special cases of verb agreement en español, ok?

Nos vemos prontito.