Breakdown of Voy a dejar mi mochila en la sala.
Questions & Answers about Voy a dejar mi mochila en la sala.
In Latin American Spanish, ir a + infinitive (voy a dejar) is the most common way to talk about the near future, similar to English “I’m going to leave…”.
Dejo mi mochila en la sala is grammatically correct, but it usually sounds like a habit or a general fact: “I (usually) leave my backpack in the living room.”
So use voy a dejar when you mean something you’re about to do or plan to do soon, and dejo for routine or timeless statements.
In this context, dejar means to leave something in a place and go away from it, similar to “to leave” or “to drop off” in English.
It does not necessarily mean to abandon it forever; it can be temporary, like: Voy a dejar mi mochila aquí mientras almorzamos (I’m going to leave my backpack here while we have lunch).
Dejar can also mean to stop doing something when followed by de + infinitive (e.g., dejar de fumar – to stop smoking), but that’s a different structure.
Spanish normally uses a possessive adjective like mi, tu, su, nuestro directly before body parts and personal belongings when you want to say “my/your/his/her/our”.
So mi mochila is “my backpack”.
You would use la mochila when you mean “the backpack” in general, not specifically yours, or when it’s already clear from context whose it is and you’re just referring back to the backpack.
In Spanish, mochila is a feminine noun, so we say la mochila, una mochila, mi mochila.
There’s no perfect rule to predict gender; you mostly learn each noun with its article: la mochila, el libro, la mesa, el teléfono.
As a rough pattern, many nouns ending in -a are feminine, and mochila follows that pattern, but there are exceptions (e.g., el día is masculine).
Yes, Voy a poner mi mochila en la sala is also correct.
Poner focuses on the act of placing the backpack somewhere (“to put it there”).
Dejar focuses more on leaving it there and not taking it with you, even if only for a while.
In many everyday situations, both can be used, but dejar slightly emphasizes that the backpack will stay in that place for some time.
In most of Latin America, la sala by itself usually means “the living room” (the main sitting room in a house or apartment).
In some contexts, especially in schools or institutions, sala can be part of a compound phrase like sala de clases (classroom) or sala de espera (waiting room).
If you just hear en la sala in a home context, it almost always means “in the living room.”
En is used for location: being in, on, or at a place. So en la sala means “in the living room.”
A is used more for movement toward a destination: Voy a la sala = “I’m going to the living room.”
In your sentence, the important idea is where the backpack will end up (its location), not the movement of the speaker, so Spanish uses en.
Yes, Voy a dejar en la sala mi mochila is grammatically possible and would be understood.
However, the most natural, neutral order in Spanish is usually Voy a dejar mi mochila en la sala: verb + direct object + place.
Putting en la sala before mi mochila can add slight emphasis to the place (sort of “in the living room is where I’m going to leave my backpack”), but it’s less common in everyday speech.
The verb ending -oy in voy already shows that the subject is yo (“I”).
You can say Yo voy a dejar mi mochila en la sala, and it’s correct, but in normal conversation, Spanish speakers usually omit the subject pronoun unless they want to emphasize it.
So Voy a dejar mi mochila en la sala is the most natural version.
Voy is the first-person singular (yo) form of the verb ir (to go) in the present tense.
The full present conjugation of ir is: voy, vas, va, vamos, van in Latin America.
It’s an irregular verb, so you just have to memorize these forms.
Mi mochila is singular: mi (my) + mochila (backpack).
If you had more than one, you would say mis mochilas: Voy a dejar mis mochilas en la sala (“I’m going to leave my backpacks in the living room”).
The possessive changes from mi to mis when the noun is plural, and the noun also changes (mochila → mochilas).
The sentence Voy a dejar mi mochila en la sala is neutral and completely natural; it just states what you’re going to do.
If you’re asking permission or trying to be especially polite, you might add something like ¿Puedo dejar mi mochila en la sala? (“Can I leave my backpack in the living room?”) or Voy a dejar mi mochila en la sala, si no hay problema.
If you’re requesting someone to let you or to do it for you, then you’d add por favor in the appropriate place: ¿Puedo dejar mi mochila en la sala, por favor?