Spanish II: Verbs Followed by Prepositions

Verbs Followed by Prepositions

Some expressions in English require a verb to be followed by a preposition. You often do not notice the preposition when you speak English, but you will incorrectly think you need to provide a Spanish equivalent when you translate these expressions. For the English expressions below, the Spanish translation includes a verb that is not followed by any preposition.

to be grateful for	agradecer
to turn off	apagar
to go down	bajar
to look for	buscar
to fall down	caerse
to heat up	calentar ( e> ie)
to hang up	colgar ( o> ue)
to be acquainted with	conocer
to cut off, to cut out	cortar
to hand over	entregar
to wrap up	envolver ( o> ue)
to listen to	escuchar
to wait for, to hope for	esperar
to look at	mirar
to pay for	pagar
to take off	quitar
to know how to	saber
to take out	sacar
to go out	salir

After the difficulties presented by por and para, it should be refreshing to learn that some simple prepositions can be translated to a simple English equivalent. The most common truly simple prepositions are listed below.

ante	before, in the presence of
bajo	under
contra	against
desde	from (as in since)
después de	after
durante	during
entre	among
entre	between
excepto	except
hacia	toward
hasta	as far as, even up to; until
mediante	by means of
menos	except
salvo	except
según	according to
sin	without
sobre	about, concerning (topic); above, on, over, on top of (physically)
tras	after; behind

Use with infinitive

Remember that any time a preposition is immediately followed by a verb, that verb will be in its infinitive form. This is not always true in English, so there will be times when it will not “sound right” to use an infinitive, but there are no exceptions to the Spanish rule: A verb must be in its infinitive form if it immediately follows a preposition.