preposition use

Question

In a recent post I mistakenly said:

Es sota, caballo y rey de preparar ese plato

Why grammatically is this wrong? I was corrected with

Preparar ese plato es sota, caballo y rey. Cortar, cocer y sazonar y listo.

Although I now realize this sounds great to my ear, I feel I would continue making the same mistakes with different examples.

How can I learn from this? I specially refer to the preposition use or rather elimination of it. Can anyone explain or give me some more examples to help me get my head around it? I don't know how to research this type of grammar myself as it is a specific type of sentence.

Here is the link to my previous post.

Answer 1

Let's analyze the second sentence. It's correct.:

Preparar ese plato es sota, caballo y rey.

• Subject (S): "Preparar ese plato"

  • "Preparar" is the verb, acting as the main action.
  • "Ese plato" is the direct object, specifying what is being prepared.

• Predicate (P): "Es sota, caballo y rey"

  • "Es" is the copular verb (a form of the verb "to be"), indicating a state of being.
  • "sota, caballo y rey" is an attribute of the verb "ser", serving as the complement of the subject. It's an idiomatic expression describing the how's the dish ("ese plato").

Let's analyze what you said. I agree that's incorrect, but I'll explain you why:

Es sota, caballo y rey de preparar ese plato

• Subject (S): "De preparar ese plato"
• Predicate (P): "Es sota, caballo y rey"

The subject is the same "De preparar ese plato". But in this case, it contains a preposition "De" that does not make any sense. "De" is a preposition mostly used to "Denote possession or ownership" (see RAE) .

The sentence's subject, "preparar ese plato", does not have an owner. It does not need a "De" because it's a subject, not a complement.

Be conscient that the order of your sentence was not wrong, although S+P is the most used order. It's corrent when saying:

"sota caballo y rey es preparar ese plato".

"De" is a preposition used to introduce complements.

Here you have some correct examples when using "de":

La receta es de mi abuela [S+P]

De mi abuela es la receta [P+S]

Cocinar es de cocineros [S+P]

De cocineros es cocinar [P+S]