The verb CAN is used to speak about "poder" or "saber" in Spanish. The main characteristics are:
- it's a modal verb: it is a way of saying something; in this case: necessity/ lack of necessity/ possibility/ permition / prohibition
- it's defective: with NO infinitive, NO -S in the 3rd person in singular and NO past participle. To solve this problem we use to be able to
- it's an auxiliary verb: we use it for negative and interrogative forms and it's followed by infinitive without TO
To practise with listening, here you have these songs with CAN: Hall of fame and The Eagles
To practise with gammar, you can do these exercises:
To practise with gammar, you can do these exercises:
- exercise 1: a fill in the gap exercise with CAN and COULD
- exercise 2: different meanings/uses of CAN
- exercise 3: if you want to see how to use to be able to
The verb MUST is used to speak about "deber hacer algo", but it's very similar to HAVE TO in Spanish "tener que haccer algo". If you want to see the difference between them you can go to this link but here you are the main differences:
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MUST
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TO HAVE TO
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It's a modal
verb: it means obligation; in negative it means prohibition and it’s
similar to CAN’T
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It's a modal
verb: it means obligation, like MUST but in negative it means NOT
NECESSARY
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It's defective:
with NO infinitive, NO -S in the 3rd person in singular and
NO past or participle. To solve this
problem we use to have to
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It's NOT a defective
verb: you can use it in any tense ( HAVE – HAD –HAD)
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It's an auxiliary verb: we use it for negative
and interrogative forms and it's followed by infinitive without TO
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It's NOT an auxiliary verb: we need an auxiliary for
negative and interrogative forms (DO/DID/WILL,etc.)
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To practise with modals you can use these two exercises:
To finish with, here you have another song to see the use of CAN and MUST with Enrique Iglesias: It must be love
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