Master Antes & Después (Before and After)

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hey everybody, Cur Paul here. Today I'm going to be talking about how to say before and after things happen in Spanish. And I know that sounds really simple. You're like, "How long is this video really going to be, Paul?" Well, it gets a little bit more complex, you may think. Because the subjunctive is going to be in some of these clauses.

[00:00:16]Yes, the subjunctive, if you watch my videos for any length of time, you hear me talk about all the time. It is the keystone to mastering Spanish. And if you've been avoiding it, you're just doing yourself a disservice. All right?

[00:00:28]We're not going to avoid it today. All right. Now, we're going to start, you know, really simple. I'm going to give you some simple formulas here because I think formulas are an easy way to remember how to use things and, you know, you can plug it in your Spanish.

[00:00:39]And we're just going to have like before some noun, like before the event, before work, and after some noun. So, these are our formulas. Ant plus a noun is before.

[00:00:51]Okay? Before work would be.

[00:00:55]Now you'll notice it's del and that's because de and l together become del.

[00:01:01]Now if it was a feminine noun we don't do that before class.

[00:01:06]Now our formula for after is plus now. So go ahead and say um after work did you remember did I mean I hope so because we just talked about it after class.

[00:01:23]glass. See, that's pretty easy. I don't think you're going to have any trouble using that particular um little construction. But let's go ahead and get into verbs. And this is where things get a little bit more complex. I'm going to start with before. And these are our patterns plus infinitive and ant plus subjunctive. Now, the infinitive is the unconjugated form of a verb like is to eat. So, when you see that in a formula, you're just going to drop in that infinitive. And when you see plus subjunctive, that means whatever verb is coming after has to be conjugated in the subjunctive. Now, knowing which one of these formulas to choose is the key, but it's not that difficult. Um, what you have to do is recognize if there's a subject change. Think of this as a sentence with two clauses. Something happens before something else happens or supposed to happen. The question you have to ask yourself is, is the subject of the first clause the same as the subject of the second clause? If the subject is the same in both clauses, we're going to use that first formula, ant plus infinitive, right? We like that because it's easy. We just plug in infinitives. We don't have to conjugate it. We don't have to think about it really hard. It's simple. But if the subject does change, we're going to be using that second one plus subjunctive. I'm going to call my mom before eating. Now, I could say, I'm going to call my mom before I eat. But I could say before eating, and that's actually a way that you know you're only dealing with the same subject because you have to ask yourself, okay, there's really two clauses there. Who's calling?

[00:03:06]Me. I am. Right? So, I'm the subject.

[00:03:09]And then, who's eating? I am same person, right? Me. That's why we're just going to use plus infinitive.

[00:03:20]See, super easy. Just pop that in there.

[00:03:23]Now, let's see what happens when we change the subject, meaning there's a different subject in each clause. I'm going to eat before you arrive. Who's the subject of the first clause? I am, right? I'm going to eat. Who's the subject of the second clause? You.

[00:03:38]Before you arrive. So, we're going to have to use that second construction I showed you plus subjunctive and see it's that comes from the verb and it's in the subjunctive meaning the conjugation. Now, if you're not familiar with subjunctive, just think of it as a different set of conjugations that are triggered by certain grammatical constructions. We call those subjunctive triggers. And the easiest way to learn the subjunctive is to learn those triggers like little formulas like the one I'm showing you here so you know how to use it correctly every single time.

[00:04:13]If you want to learn more about subjunctive triggers and make it much easier on yourself, I recently came out with a PDF guide. This is a printed version. Um I don't offer a printed version. One of the reasons is is because I think it's a lot easier to use in a digital format for so many reasons I won't even get into. But also, anytime I make changes to this, um, even if you've already bought it, you're going to get an email to download the latest version. And if we printed them, you wouldn't be able to do that. All right?

[00:04:39]But this is available. There's a link to it in the description section. I break down all of the highfrequency common um, subjunctive triggers into little formulas. Lots of examples in here.

[00:04:50]It'll get you up to speed quickly. All right, let's look at another example of this. You have to finish that. Whatever that is, we'll keep it generic. before the movie starts. So, we have two clauses, right? Separated by before.

[00:05:03]Who's the subject of the first one? Who has to finish that? You. Before what?

[00:05:08]The movie starts. So, who's the subject of the second clause? The movie. The subject controls the verb. Okay, that's going to help you figure it out.

[00:05:22]See, it's in the subjunctive. Do you want to try one? Let's go ahead and try one. Okay. I want to make it a little tricky for you. I want to challenge you a little bit. Close the window before it rains. Okay, so we're going to use the imperative, the command form in here.

[00:05:34]Close the window before it rains. I need some coffee here.

[00:05:41]Are you ready?

[00:05:46]Did you get that? Did it throw you off a little bit? Cuz we have two subjects, right? I'm telling you to close the window. So you laana, that's the imperative. Did you get that? Now, if you said because you're speaking the form, that's fine.

[00:06:02]Before it rains. Now, weather sometimes throws people off because they're like, "Okay, is that a subject change? It rains. The weather rains. You didn't rain. So, that's clearly a subject change." Now, let's take a look at after. Now, just like antes, we can use this day plus infinitive when we don't have a subject change. After getting home, I went to bed. Right? I'm the subject of both.

[00:06:32]Wow. Just plug it in infinitives, folks.

[00:06:34]Now, let's talk about when we have a subject change. In that case, we're going to be using.

[00:06:41]You will occasionally see this without they just but the most common form is.

[00:06:46]So, that's what I'll be using in all the examples. Now, with we were pretty lucky, right? because it is always followed by the subjunctive. It is a super easy little formula to use. That's not the case with disboy K. We're going to have some various options and it's going to depend on the timing of the event. Basically, it's going to break down like this. If we're talking about a present event right now, our only option is going to be the indicative, the not the subjunctive. If we're talking about a past event, there's some options there. We could have the indicative or the subjunctive.

[00:07:21]and the subjunctive being more common in Spain. I'm going to talk about those little nuances um when I go through the examples.

[00:07:28]And if we talk about a future event, our only option is the subjunctive everywhere. That's going to be the only option. Let's go ahead and start with just a present event. We're just talking about something in the present tense, nothing in the future. This is like a general statement about something. Um after the alarm goes off, I get up.

[00:07:52]See, that's indicative. Present tense indicative. Probably should have led with that, but you got it right now.

[00:07:58]Let's talk about something in the past.

[00:08:00]And here we have two options. It could be indicative. It could be subjunctive.

[00:08:05]And there's no change in meaning. Now, regionally, one is often preferred over the other, with the subjunctive being more common in Spain than say in Latin America, but you'll still see it in Latin America, especially in journalism.

[00:08:18]When I'm reading um the online papers, you know, from Mexico, they really like to use the subjunctive after even with past occurred events. I called you after you got home, right? We have two subjects there, I and you.

[00:08:35]That's a possibility. Or we could follow it up with the subjunctive. Since we're in the past tense, it's going to be the imperfect subjunctive.

[00:08:46]Same meaning. Both are correct. Now, let's talk about a future event. When we're talking about a future event, the subjunctive is our only option. We will begin after everyone arrives.

[00:09:02]See, it's in the subjunctive and that is our only option here. I'm going to give you one more example because it's a little bit different. It's still along the future lines. I'll call you after Carlos arrives.

[00:09:18]Carlos. Now, in that one, I'm using the subjunctive, right? That's what we expected. But way up there in front, I didn't use the future tense. I used the present tense. And that's important to point out because um Spanish does that a lot. They use the present tense, especially when we're linking with the time, you know, that has cleared something in the future where we only use the future. They'll use the present.

[00:09:41]For example, if I'm going to say, "Hey, um, we'll see each other tomorrow." In Spanish, I'm just going to use the plain old present tense.

[00:09:49]That's it. So, just because you're not seeing the future tense doesn't mean it's not going to use subjunctive because we're clearly talking about a future event. So, really focus on that.

[00:09:59]Well, that's the end of the video. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, don't forget to give it a thumbs up and uh until next time.