Common mistakes in Spanish: en/por/de la mañana
There are two problems beginners (and not so beginners) have with the time expressions "in the morning", "in the afternoon", and "at night":
1. At first, students understandably translate "in the morning (etc.)" as "en la mañana". As a beginner, you can forget about "en la mañana" since it's rarely used outside of a phrase with a date like "en la mañana del día 22 de marzo". What students do learn quickly and without many problems are the correct forms:
por la mañana = in the morning
por la tarde = in the afternoon
por la noche = at night
which leads to problem number two:
2. Students learn "por la mañana" so well that they find it very difficult to remember that the "por" changes to "de" when speaking about a specific hour as in:
a las 6:10 de la mañana
a las 5:00 de la tarde
a las 11:30 de la noche
Here are some examples with both situations:
Spanish
1. Hablaré con José mañana por la mañana.
2. Hablaré con José mañana a las 9:00 de la mañana.
3. Me gusta comer tarde por la tarde.
4. Me gusta comer a las 3:00 de la tarde.
5. Lo vi el sábado por la noche.
6. Lo vi el sábado a las 11:00 de la noche.
English
1. I'll talk to José tomorrow morning.
2. I'll talk to José tomorrow morning at 9:00.
3. I like to have lunch late in the afternoon.
4. I like to have lunch at 3:00 in the afternoon.
5. I saw him Saturday night.
6. I saw him Saturday night at 11:00.
Brad
