Marta's tooth: Spanish A1 reading
Marta loses a tooth, brushes, and puts it under the pillow. An A1 text about the Ratoncito Pérez, enamel, and cavities.
El diente de Marta
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About this article
What you'll learn
Present tense and mouth vocabulary: diente, muela, esmalte, caries, cepillo.
Marta is seven and loses a baby tooth. At night she brushes with fluoride, uses floss, and puts the tooth under the pillow. She waits for the Ratoncito Pérez, a mouse who takes the tooth and leaves a coin.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
donde el cepillo no llega
newwhere the brush does not reach
Donde opens a place clause with no article and no preposition, exactly like English where. Llegar means to reach, so llega donde is reaches the place where.
A simple way to point at a place you cannot name.
dos veces al día
newtwice a day
Vez means a time or an occasion: una vez, dos veces, tres veces. Al día comes from a + el día and means per day.
The same pattern gives tres veces a la semana and una vez al mes.
debajo de la almohada
newunder the pillow
Debajo de means under, and the de is obligatory: debajo de la mesa, never debajo la mesa. La almohada is the pillow.
Encima de and al lado de work the same way: they always keep the de.
visitar al dentista
newto visit the dentist
Two rules meet here. A + el always contracts to al. And Spanish puts a in front of a person who is the object of the verb: visitar al dentista, never visitar el dentista.
This personal a is compulsory with people and has no equivalent in English.
cada seis meses
newevery six months
Cada never changes form: cada día, cada seis meses, cada dos años. It takes no article after it.
One invariable word covers every, each and per.
Cuidado con
newWatch out for
Cuidado con + noun warns about something, with no verb at all: Cuidado con el perro, Cuidado con el escalón.
One of the shortest warnings in Spanish, and you will read it on street signs.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
Molars, back teeth
muelas
molars, back teeth
Spanish splits in two what English calls teeth: los dientes are the front ones, las muelas are the big ones at the back.
You need it for dolor de muelas, which is how Spanish normally says toothache.
Coin
moneda
coin
Una moneda is a coin. The same word also means a currency: la moneda de España es el euro.
Two everyday meanings in one word, both useful when you pay for something.
Enamel
esmalte
enamel
El esmalte is the outer layer of the tooth, and it is the hardest material in the human body, harder than bone. Acid is what damages it.
The word explains why brushing matters: enamel does not grow back.
Cavity, cavities
caries
cavity, cavities
Caries never changes: una caries, dos caries, las caries. The final s belongs to the word itself, so do not read it as a plural ending.
A word that looks plural and is not, which is exactly where readers slip.
Toothpaste
pasta de dientes
toothpaste
Spanish joins the two nouns with de: pasta de dientes, literally paste of teeth. The same pattern gives cepillo de dientes.
De is how Spanish links two nouns, where English simply stacks them.
Tap, faucet
grifo
tap, faucet
El grifo is the tap in Spain. Across much of Latin America the same thing is la llave or el caño.
A daily household word, and a clear example of how Spain and Latin America differ.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
Reflexive: nos cepillamos
Nos cepillamos los dientes
We brush our teeth
Cepillarse is reflexive: the subject acts on itself, so the pronoun changes with the person: me cepillo, te cepillas, nos cepillamos. Note that Spanish then says los dientes, not mis dientes, because the pronoun already says whose they are.
Using the article instead of the possessive is the half learners forget.
Doler works like gustar
me duele una muela
my back tooth hurts
Doler has no ordinary subject. The thing that hurts is the subject and the person appears as an indirect pronoun: me duele una muela, te duelen las muelas. The verb agrees with the tooth, not with you.
That is why the verb turns plural as soon as more than one tooth hurts.
A se that is not reflexive
todos se caen
they all fall out
Nos cepillamos really is reflexive: we act on ourselves. Se caen is not. Nobody pulls the teeth out; the se simply belongs to the verb caerse. Spanish uses one pronoun for both, so read the verb rather than the pronoun.
Compare caer, when something falls, with caerse, when a tooth or a person falls.
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