del

/del/

preposition #29 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

of the, from the

Examples

.

The head of the department will arrive tomorrow.

, agotado.

I am coming from work, I am exhausted.

emocionante.

The end of the match was exciting.

Del is the mandatory contraction of the preposition de and the masculine singular definite article el. Spanish requires this contraction whenever de immediately precedes el - writing "de el" separately is a grammatical error.

The contraction only applies to the article el, not to the pronoun él (he). "Vengo de él" (I come from him) is correct and does not contract. Similarly, no contraction occurs before feminine la ("de la casa") or plural los/las ("de los niños").

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This word is part of lesson 1.

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