Llevo la pulsera de mi mamá cada día.

I wear my mom’s bracelet every day.

Breakdown of Llevo la pulsera de mi mamá cada día.

• yo: I
• mi: my
• el día: the day
• de: of

Questions & Answers about Llevo la pulsera de mi mamá cada día.

What does llevo mean in this sentence, and why can’t I use tengo or uso?

In Llevo la pulsera de mi mamá cada día, llevo is the first-person singular present of llevar, meaning “I wear” or “I carry on my body.”

• tengo would simply mean “I have” (i.e. I own it).
• uso would mean “I use” (i.e. I make functional use of it, not necessarily wear it as jewelry).
  So llevo is the correct verb when you’re talking about wearing or carrying an accessory on your person.

Why is it la pulsera de mi mamá instead of mi mamá pulsera or mi pulsera de mamá?

Spanish marks possession with de in the pattern [thing] de [owner].

• La pulsera de mi mamá = “my mom’s bracelet.”
  You could say mi pulsera, but that means “my bracelet” (you own it, without specifying it belonged to your mom).
  Mi mamá pulsera is ungrammatical word order, and mi pulsera de mamá sounds odd because you’ve already used mi to mark possession.

Why do we use the definite article la before pulsera? In English we say “I wear a bracelet.”

Spanish typically requires an article before a noun, even when in English you’d use “a.”

• Llevo la pulsera = “I wear the bracelet.”
  If you really want to say “I wear a bracelet,” you’d use una: Llevo una pulsera cada día.
  With clothing and accessories, the definite article is very common.