Index / Language / Records / Spanish / Grammar
Where agreement is contested rather than automatic. Both standards agree on the rules; the speech of both ignores the same ones.
The control text · argumentative
Prohibir el celular en clase parece una medida drástica, pero los datos sugieren que funciona. En las escuelas que adoptaron la restricción, los docentes reportan menos interrupciones y una caída en los casos de acoso digital. Es cierto que el aparato también sirve para estudiar, y sería ingenuo negarlo. Aun así, el costo de la distracción recae sobre quienes tienen menos apoyo en casa. Mientras no haya pruebas de que el uso libre mejora el aprendizaje, la carga de la prueba corresponde a quien defiende el permiso.
Where the two part
Latin American · the base
Habían muchas personas is very widespread in speech across Latin America and still marked in writing.
Peninsular · the contrast
The same error, similarly widespread. Neither standard licenses it, which makes this a speech-against-writing domain rather than a two-standard one.
10 options
LatAm Había muchas personas.
Peninsular Había muchas personas.
The tellHaber stays singular no matter how plural its complement.
A rule with no exceptions, which is rare, and it is directly examinable.
The temptation to write habían is strong, and native speech supplies it constantly.
Habían muchas personas — ordinary in speech, wrong in writing everywhere
The tellA plural haber with an existential meaning.
On the sheet because it is one of the very few errors that is equally common on both continents, so it cannot be excused as regional.
Marked wrong in both exam lanes and by every style guide.
La mayoría de los docentes reporta — or reportan. Both defensible.
The tellA singular collective with a plural complement.
Genuinely open: both agreements are accepted, so this is a style choice you can make deliberately.
Consistency within a text matters more than the choice, and mixing them looks like carelessness.
LatAm Se venden casas. — agrees
Peninsular Se vende casas. — non-standard
The tellThe verb agrees with the thing affected.
Directly examinable, and the same rule as Italian's si passivante — so it transfers.
It looks identical to the impersonal se, which does not agree. See GRM-05c.
He conservado las facturas. — never conservadas
The tellAfter haber the participle never changes.
Absolute, and simpler than Italian, where a preceding clitic forces agreement.
Your Italian will supply agreement after a clitic (le ho viste), and Spanish forbids it — las he visto, never vistas.
La suscripción quedó cancelada. — Anchor A
The tellAnchor A contains one. With ser, estar and quedar the participle agrees with the subject.
Identical to Portuguese and Italian, so it transfers free.
With a long subject the agreement is easy to lose track of.
| Loan | Common gender |
|---|---|
| el internet / la internet | both attested |
| el app / la app | varies |
| el email | masculine |
The tellA borrowed noun with no settled gender.
Honest complexity: not every agreement question has one answer, and knowing which are open is knowledge.
Because both are defensible, it is a poor place to be confident in either direction.
Les agradecería que me abonaran… — Anchor A: third-person plural throughout
The tellAnchor A's whole request agrees with ustedes.
Once the address choice on GRM-01 is made, this follows mechanically.
Switching address mid-text breaks agreement in several places at once, which is why the error is so visible.
Vos tenés el comprobante — and the imperative tené
The tellA distinct verb paradigm, not just a pronoun swap.
Named here because voseo is an agreement fact as much as an address fact.
Half-adopting it — vos tienes — is a form that exists nowhere.
Brazilian speech reduces plural marking to the determiner; Spanish does not
The tellLos estudiante — a Brazilian pattern in Spanish.
Named because it is the one Portuguese habit that would be an outright error rather than a variant.
Spanish marks the plural on every element, always. Nothing in the standard relaxes it.