My Sister's Doll: Family Relations in Spanish (Level A1)
Read Spanish about a doll called María: what she looks like, how she is cared for, and the Reyes Magos on 6 January. Level A1, with instant word translation.
La muñeca de mi hermana
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A short text about a doll called María: what she looks like, how the narrator's sister plays with her, and why she arrived as a Reyes gift on 6 January. Level A1, for beginners. It also explains that muñeca means both a doll and the wrist. The kit has 12 vocabulary cards and 3 grammar cards, and the text ends with questions for you to answer.
María es muy bonita. Tiene el pelo rubio y largo y los ojos azules como el cielo. Lleva un vestido rosa y unos zapatos blancos muy pequeños.
Mi hermana juega con María todos los días. Le da de comer comida de juguete. La pone a dormir en una cama pequeña. A veces peina a María: el pelo es muy suave y mi hermana hace trenzas bonitas.
En español la palabra muñeca tiene dos significados. Una muñeca es un juguete, pero la muñeca es también una parte del cuerpo: está entre la mano y el brazo. Mi hermana lleva el reloj en la muñeca izquierda.
María es un regalo de Reyes. En España muchos niños reciben juguetes el seis de enero, el día de los Reyes Magos. La noche antes, los niños dejan los zapatos cerca de la ventana.
Yo miro a mi hermana cuando juega. Ella habla con María todo el tiempo y le cuenta cosas del colegio. Es muy divertido.
Por la noche, mi hermana besa a María y dice buenas noches. Pone a María al lado de su almohada. Mi hermana quiere mucho a su muñeca.
¿Y tú? ¿Tienes un juguete favorito? ¿Cómo se llama? ¿Llevas el reloj en la muñeca izquierda o en la derecha? ¿Qué regalo quieres este año?
About this article
What you'll learn
12 vocabulary cards on toys, hair and clothes, the verbs tener, querer and llevar, 3 grammar cards on tener, possessives and adjective agreement, the personal a, and the two meanings of muñeca
A short text about a doll called María: what she looks like, how the narrator's sister plays with her, and why she arrived as a Reyes gift on 6 January. Level A1, for beginners. It also explains that muñeca means both a doll and the wrist. The kit has 12 vocabulary cards and 3 grammar cards, and the text ends with questions for you to answer.
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.
Le da de comer
newshe 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
newMaría 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
newshe 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
newmy 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
newat 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
newshe 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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
Two adjectives side by side in one sentence, and only one of them agrees.
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