Breakdown of Las conchas que traje de la playa son frágiles también, guárdalas con cuidado.
Questions & Answers about Las conchas que traje de la playa son frágiles también, guárdalas con cuidado.
Spanish distinguishes by speaker’s viewpoint:
- Traer = “to bring” (toward the speaker or current location)
- Llevar = “to take” (away from the speaker toward another place)
Since the speaker has already brought the shells to where they are now, traje (preterite of traer) is the natural choice.
Spanish adverbs like también (“also”) are fairly flexible, but they commonly follow the word they modify when that word is an adjective. Here you’re emphasizing that the shells are fragile too:
Las conchas … son frágiles también.
You could also say también son frágiles, but that slightly shifts the focus onto the shells being an additional thing that is fragile, rather than emphasizing the adjective itself.
Guárdalas is the affirmative tú-command of guardar (“to store, to keep”) plus the direct-object pronoun las (“them,” referring back to conchas).
• Imperative of guardar: guarda (“store/keep!”)
• Add pronoun las: guarda + las → guardalas
We write guárdalas as one word because Spanish requires clitic pronouns to attach to affirmative commands.
When you attach a pronoun to an affirmative command, you often shift the natural stress. To preserve the original stress of guarda (which falls on the first syllable), you add an accent:
guarda → guárdalas
Con cuidado literally means “with care.” In Spanish, to express “doing something carefully,” you often use con (“with”) + noun (cuidado = “care”). It functions like an adverbial phrase:
guárdalas con cuidado → “store them with care” / “put them away carefully.”