Breakdown of No quiero que castiguen a los niños, ni a las niñas tampoco.
el niño
the boy / the child
la niña
the girl
no
no / not
a
personal a (marks a person object)
querer
to want; to love (a person)
que
that (relative pronoun, conjunction)
tampoco
not … either / neither
ni
nor / not even
castigar
to punish
Questions & Answers about No quiero que castiguen a los niños, ni a las niñas tampoco.
Why is castiguen spelled with a gu instead of just a g?
The verb is castigar (to punish). In the present subjunctive, the ending for "they" is -en. If we just dropped the -ar and added -en, we would get castigen, which changes the hard "g" sound (like in "go") to a soft Spanish "g" sound (like an English "h"). To keep the original hard "g" sound from castigar, we must change the spelling to -gu-, giving us castiguen.
Why do we use the subjunctive form castiguen here instead of the indicative castigan?
The first part of the sentence, No quiero que... (I don't want...), expresses a wish or desire about someone else's actions. Expressing a desire that involves a change of subject (from "I" to "they") is a classic trigger for the subjunctive mood.
Why is there an a before both los niños and las niñas?
This is the "personal a". In Spanish, when the direct object of a verb is a specific person or group of people (like the boys and girls being punished), you must put an a right before them. Notice that the a gets repeated for each group.
Usually los niños translates to "the children". Does it mean that here?
Normally, the masculine plural los niños is used for a mixed group of children. However, because the speaker specifically adds ni a las niñas tampoco (nor the girls either), it is clear they are separating the groups, making los niños specifically mean "the boys" in this context.
How does the phrase ni ... tampoco work at the end of the sentence?
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