Presente de indicativo: tener

Tener ("to have") is one of the first verbs you will need every single day in Spain — and one of the most stubbornly irregular. It has two things going on at once: the yo form ends in -go (tengo), and the stressed syllables undergo a stem change e → ie (tienes, tiene, tienen). On top of that, tener powers a long list of fixed expressions where Spanish uses to have exactly where English uses to be: hunger, thirst, age, fear, sleepiness.

If you only learn one irregular verb perfectly this week, make it this one.

Full conjugation

The endings are the regular -er endings (-o, -es, -e, -emos, -éis, -en) — what changes is the stem. The yo form takes a special -g- insertion (ten- → teng-), and four other persons diphthongize the stressed e into ie. The nosotros and vosotros forms keep the plain stem because the stress falls on the ending, not the e.

The third example shows a peninsular vocabulary point worth memorising now: in Spain, an apartment is a piso. The word departamento, which is normal across most of Latin America, sounds foreign in Madrid or Barcelona, where departamento tends to mean a department of a company or a university.

Tener for age — never ser

In English you are twenty years old. In Spanish you have twenty years.

The construction is rigid: tener + [number] + años. You can drop the word años only when context makes it crystal clear ("¿Cuántos tienes?" — "Treinta y dos."), but in writing you keep it.

Tener for physical sensations

The same pattern covers most bodily and emotional states that English describes with to be. Spanish treats hunger, thirst, heat, cold, sleepiness, fear, hurry, luck, and shame as things you have, not things you are.

Notice that the noun (hambre, calor, ganas) takes no article in the basic form. You can intensify with mucho/mucha (tengo mucha hambre) but not with muy — that is one of the most common mistakes. We come back to it below.

Tener + noun — beyond hunger

The pattern tener + noun extends well past the body. Spanish describes many abstract states with the same construction.

The construction is so productive that Spanish has built dozens of idioms on it: tener éxito (to be successful), tener lugar (to take place), tener en cuenta (to take into account), tener pinta de (to look like / to seem like). Each one is worth a separate vocabulary lesson, but the pattern itself is yours the moment you internalise tener + noun.

Tener que + infinitive — obligation

To say I have to do something, Spanish uses tener que + infinitive. The que is non-negotiable; dropping it produces something that is not Spanish.

Tener for possession

This is the meaning closest to English have: ownership of something concrete or abstract.

When the possessed thing is generic (no specific car, just car-ownership in the abstract), Spanish often drops the article: ¿tienes coche? — not ¿tienes un coche?. The article reappears the moment you specify (tengo un coche viejo).

A quick dialogue with vosotros

In Spain, vosotros shows up constantly in informal conversation. Here is a snippet that uses tener twice with a group:

Latin American learners who arrive in Spain often default to ustedes with friends and immediately sound stiff. Use vosotros the moment you are speaking to two or more people you would address individually as tú.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• Tener is irregular twice over: a -go yo form and an e → ie stem change. The boot exempts nosotros and vosotros.
• Use tener — not ser or estar — for age, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, sleepiness, fear, luck, and most bodily/emotional sensations.
• Tener que + infinitive is to have to; the que is mandatory.
• Modify the sensation nouns with mucho/mucha, not muy: mucha hambre, mucho calor.
• In Spain, vosotros is the everyday plural-you: tenéis, not tienen, when talking to friends.

Once tener feels automatic, jump to the wider yo-go family — poner, salir, hacer, venir, decir all share the same trick.