If you’re a storyteller or you just want to add an emphasis on how you speak, using emphasis connectors is an excellent way to do it.
Adding emphasis to your speech will help you catch listeners’ attention.
In Spanish, there are many emphasis connectors like, for example, de hecho. This phrase is the Spanish equivalent of “in fact“.
As you may know, connectors help to establish a relation between two sentences.
Other Spanish emphasis connectors are: cabe resaltar que, sin duda, sobre todo, cabe señalar que, and ciertamente.
How to use “de hecho”
De hecho is quite simple to use.
When it’s about its position in a sentence, you can use it at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end.
- Some good examples of this would be:
De hecho, me gusta mucho tu casa.
In fact, I like your house a lot.
Me gusta mucho tu casa, de hecho.
I like your house a lot, in fact.
Me gusta mucho tu casa, de hecho, quisiera comprarla.
I like your house a lot, in fact, I want to buy it.
The first and second examples are pretty similar.
However, the third one connects two different sentences. Me gusta mucho tu casa and quisiera comprarla.The second part is the result or effect of the first sentence.
Also, when we talk about grammar, you can use de hecho after a period followed by a comma, after a semicolon followed by a comma, or just after a comma if it’s at the end of the sentence.
If you want to connect two sentences and not use de hecho between them, you still can do it.
Nonetheless, you’ll need to use another connector like y, “and”.
- To better understand this, let’s see the following examples:
De hecho, me gusta mucho tu casa y quisiera comprarla.
In fact, I like your house a lot and I want to buy it.
Me gusta mucho tu casa y quisiera comprarla, de hecho.
I like your house a lot and I want to buy it, in fact.
Best Spanish alternatives to “de hecho”.
Although using de hecho is very common among Spanish speakers, there are other alternatives that can be quite handy.
The top 3 alternatives are: cabe resaltar que, sin duda, and ciertamente. You can only use cabe resaltar que at the beginning of a sentence.
If you want to use cabe resaltar que in the middle of the sentence, you must use another connector like y.
- Let’s look at the examples below:
Sin duda, las plantas estan en todas partes del planeta.
Doubtlessly, plants are everywhere in the world.
Cabe resaltar que la compañía está en expansión.
It’s important to highlight that the company is expanding.
Las zanahorias están muy baratas y, cabe resaltar que, compré la misma cantidad que la semana pasada, pero gasté la mitad.
Carrots are very cheap and, it should be noted, I bought the same quantity as last week, but I spent half.
Ciertamente, la torta estaba deliciosa.
Certainly, the cake was delicious.
El fútbol es mi deporte favorito, sin duda.
Soccer is my favorite sport, undoubtedly.
Spanish war for learners: “hecho” vs “echo”
Most Spanish learners struggle to differentiate between hecho and echo.
It’s because their pronunciation is the same. But, grammatically speaking, their use is very different.
Hecho is a fact, an event that happened in the past and there’s proof of how it happened.
On the other hand, echo is the conjugation of the verb echar “to throw”
If you’re going to write an essay or you need to handle an important document for your boss, never forget that de hecho is written with the letter h at the beginning.
Sometimes, Spanish grammar can be tricky but if you learn how to write properly, standing out isn’t a challenge!