La muñeca de mi hermana

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About this article

Level A1 Reading focus

What you'll learn

Present tense, the verbs querer and tener, clothes and family words, and the two meanings of muñeca: a doll and the wrist.

The sister will not open the door until her doll María has the pink dress, the braids, and both white shoes. The missing shoe is under the blanket of the small bed. She puts her watch on her left wrist and says that muñeca names the toy and that part of the arm. María arrived as a Reyes gift on 6 January, when many children leave their shoes near the window. At night the doll sleeps beside the pillow.

After reading

Article learning block

Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.

15 items

Phrases for training

Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.

Le da de comer

new

she feeds her

Dar de comer a alguien means to feed someone. The pronoun le stands for the one being fed: le da de comer. Le does not change for gender: le da de comer a María, le da de comer a Pablo.

Spanish needs the pronoun where English uses none, and beginners drop it.

María es muy bonita

new

María is very pretty

Ser describes a lasting quality: María es bonita. Muy goes in front of the adjective and never changes its own form: muy bonita, muy pequeños.

Ser plus an adjective is the basic way to describe a person or a thing.

Lleva un vestido rosa

new

she is wearing a pink dress

Llevar in front of a garment means to wear: lleva un vestido, lleva zapatos blancos. The same verb works for a watch: lleva el reloj en la muñeca.

One Spanish verb covers wearing clothes, wearing a watch and carrying things.

Mi hermana quiere mucho a su muñeca

new

my sister loves her doll very much

Querer a alguien means to love someone. Spanish puts a in front of a person who receives the action, and here the doll is treated as a person: quiere a su muñeca, peina a María, besa a María, miro a mi hermana.

This a appears five times in the text and has no equivalent in English.

Por la noche

new

at night

Parts of the day take por: por la mañana, por la tarde, por la noche. With a clock time you use de instead: a las diez de la noche.

Learn all three together: por la mañana, por la tarde, por la noche.

dice buenas noches

new

she says good night

Buenas noches is plural in Spanish, like buenos días and buenas tardes. The verb decir is irregular in the yo form: digo, dices, dice.

In Spain these greetings are always plural: buenos días, buenas tardes, buenas noches.

Key words

Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.

muñeca

doll; wrist

La muñeca is a doll and also the wrist, the part of the arm between the hand and the forearm. Both meanings are feminine: la muñeca, las muñecas. Only the sentence tells you which one is meant.

One word with two everyday meanings, and this text uses both.

pelo rubio

blond hair

El pelo is the hair on your head and rubio means blond. With parts of the body Spanish normally uses the article rather than a possessive: tiene el pelo rubio, tiene los ojos azules.

Spanish says the hair where English says her hair.

ojos azules

blue eyes

Los ojos are the eyes and azul is blue. Azul ends in a consonant, so it has one form for both genders and adds -es in the plural: un ojo azul, unos ojos azules.

Colours ending in -o change for gender (blanco, blanca); azul only changes for number.

vestido

dress

El vestido is a dress, and the noun is masculine even though the garment is a woman's: un vestido, el vestido, unos vestidos. It comes from the verb vestir, to dress.

Masculine despite the meaning: un vestido, not una vestido.

trenzas

braids, plaits

La trenza is one braid and las trenzas are two or more. The verb is trenzar, and in everyday speech people say hacer trenzas.

Hacer trenzas is the phrase you will actually hear.

almohada

pillow

La almohada is the pillow you put under your head. It came into Spanish from Arabic, like many words that begin with al-: almohada, alfombra, almacén.

Spanish took hundreds of words from Arabic, and an initial al- is the clue.

Grammar in context

Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.

The verb tener

tiene

tener: to have

Tener is irregular twice over: the yo form is tengo, and the e of the stem becomes ie when the stress falls on it. Tengo, tienes, tiene, tenemos, tenéis, tienen. Nosotros and vosotros keep the plain e.

One of the first verbs you need, and one of the least regular.

Possessives mi and su

mi hermana / su muñeca

my; his, her, their, your

Mi and su agree in number with the thing owned, not in gender with the owner: mi hermana, mis hermanas, su muñeca, sus muñecas. Su covers his, her, your (usted) and their, so only the context says which; here su muñeca is my sister's doll.

Su is the one that confuses everybody, because it never names the owner.

Adjective agreement, and the exception

un vestido rosa y unos zapatos blancos

a pink dress and white shoes

Adjectives ending in -o agree in gender and number: blanco, blanca, blancos, blancas, so zapatos blancos. But rosa is the name of a flower used as a colour and it normally stays unchanged: un vestido rosa, unos vestidos rosa.