The Prepositions Desde and Hasta

When you want to express an activity or distance with a definitive start and end, you can use the pair of prepositions desde and hasta. In English, its equivalent would be from ... to ...

Desde and Hasta to Express Distance

Rule 1. You can use these prepositions when you want to indicate a distance with a starting and ending point.

Desde and Hasta to Express Time

Rule 2. Following the same rule, we can use these prepositions when speaking of time to establish when an activity started and ended.

Form

Rule 3. In both cases, the preposition desde is usually placed before the word indicating the starting point, and hasta is placed before the word indicating the ending point.

Prepositions De and A

Rule 4. Another set of prepositions that practically have the same usage as desde and hasta is the combination de and a. It could be said that in the spoken language, de and a are used to talk about time or shorter distances, while desde and hasta are reserved for longer distances.

However, it is important to note that this does not mean that one is correct for one purpose and the other set is not. It is simply what is more comfortable or common for some speakers.