Question 1

Why does the sentence use aquel for "that one" instead of ese?

Accepted Answer

Spanish has two main ways to say "that". You use ese for things close to the person you are talking to. You use aquel for things that are far away from both of you. By saying prefiero aquel, the speaker means "that landscape way over there in the distance".

Question 2

Why is there no noun after aquel, and does it need an accent mark?

Accepted Answer

Here, aquel is acting as a pronoun, meaning it replaces the noun entirely to avoid repeating it ("that one" instead of "that landscape"). In the past, Spanish required an accent mark on demonstrative pronouns (aquél) to tell them apart from adjectives. However, modern spelling rules say the accent is no longer needed, so it is simply written as aquel.

Question 3

How do we know to use the masculine forms este and aquel with paisaje?

Accepted Answer

Even though it ends in -e instead of -o, paisaje (landscape) is a masculine noun. A handy rule of thumb is that almost all Spanish nouns ending in -aje are masculine (like el viaje or el mensaje). Therefore, it takes the masculine modifiers este and aquel.

Question 4

Why does preferir change to prefiero?

Accepted Answer

Preferir (to prefer) is a stem-changing verb. When you conjugate it for yo (I) in the present tense, the second e in the stem changes to ie, giving us prefiero.

Question 5

Why is it Me gusta instead of Yo gusto?

Accepted Answer

The verb gustar works differently than English verbs. It literally means "to be pleasing to". So, Me gusta este paisaje actually translates to "This landscape is pleasing to me." The landscape is the subject doing the pleasing, so the verb is in the "it" form (gusta), and me shows who it pleases.

Me gusta este paisaje, pero prefiero aquel.

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