Learn Hardcore Spanish (Spain): Cuando empieza a nevar, mi hermana se siente como una niña pequeña. - When it starts to snow, my sister feels like a little girl.

Cuando empieza a nevar, mi hermana se siente como una niña pequeña.

When it starts to snow, my sister feels like a little girl.

Breakdown of Cuando empieza a nevar, mi hermana se siente como una niña pequeña.

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Questions & Answers about Cuando empieza a nevar, mi hermana se siente como una niña pequeña.

Why is there no word for it in Cuando empieza a nevar? In English we say “When it starts to snow”.

In Spanish, weather verbs like nevar, llover, hacer frío usually do not use an explicit subject pronoun like it.

English: It snows a lot here.
Spanish: Nieva mucho aquí. (literally: Snows a lot here.)

So Cuando empieza a nevar literally means “When it-begins to snow”, but the it is simply not expressed in Spanish. The verb nevar is understood as an impersonal verb (no real subject).

Why do we say empieza a nevar and not empieza nevar?

When one verb expresses beginning, continuing, learning, helping, going to do something, etc., and is followed by another verb in the infinitive, Spanish often needs the preposition a between them.

Rules of thumb:

empezar / comenzar + a + infinitive
- Empiezo a estudiar. – I start studying.
- Comenzó a llover. – It began to rain.

So empieza a nevar follows this pattern: empezar a + infinitive.

Without a (empieza nevar) is ungrammatical in standard Spanish.

Why is it empieza (present indicative) and not empiece (present subjunctive) after cuando?

Cuando can be followed by indicative or subjunctive, depending on the meaning:

Indicative (here: empieza) is used for:
- Habitual or general actions
- Past actions
Examples:
- Cuando empieza a nevar, mi hermana se siente feliz.
  Whenever it starts to snow (whenever this generally happens), my sister feels happy.
- Cuando empezó a nevar, nos fuimos a casa. – When it started to snow, we went home.
Subjunctive (empiece) is used when we talk about:
- An action in the future that is not yet realized from the point of view of the main clause
Example:
- Cuando empiece a nevar, iremos a la montaña.
  When it starts to snow (in the future), we’ll go to the mountains.

In your sentence, the speaker is talking about a general, repeated situation, so empieza (indicative) is correct.

So if I changed the sentence to talk about the future, would it be Cuando empiece a nevar?

Yes. If you’re speaking about a specific future event that hasn’t happened yet, use subjunctive:

Ahora no nieva, pero cuando empiece a nevar, iremos a esquiar.
Right now it’s not snowing, but when it starts to snow, we’ll go skiing.

Contrast:

Cuando empieza a nevar, las carreteras se llenan de nieve.
Whenever it starts to snow, the roads get full of snow. (general fact / repeated situation)

So:

general/habitual → cuando + indicativo (empieza)
specific future → cuando + subjuntivo (empiece)

What is the difference between sentir and sentirse, and why is it se siente here?

Sentir and sentirse are related but used differently:

sentir + noun = to feel something (a noun)
- Siento frío. – I feel cold.
- Siento miedo. – I feel fear / I’m afraid.
sentirse + adjective / adverb / “como …” = to feel in a certain state
- Me siento cansado. – I feel tired.
- Se siente feliz. – She feels happy.
- Se siente como una niña pequeña. – She feels like a little girl.

In your sentence, we are describing how she feels (her internal state), so Spanish uses the reflexive form sentirse:
mi hermana se siente como una niña pequeña.

Using siente without se here would sound wrong; you’d be missing the reflexive pronoun.

Could I say se siente una niña pequeña instead of se siente como una niña pequeña?

You can say both, but there is a nuance:

Se siente como una niña pequeña.
She feels like a little girl. (comparison / similarity)
Se siente una niña pequeña.
More literally: She feels a little girl (she experiences herself as a little girl). This sounds more like she identifies with being a little girl in that moment.

In everyday speech, se siente como una niña pequeña is more common and sounds more natural for the meaning “she feels like a little girl (again).”

Why is it una niña pequeña instead of una pequeña niña? Does adjective order matter?

Yes, adjective placement often changes the tone or meaning.

The normal/default position for descriptive adjectives is after the noun:
- una niña pequeña – a small / little girl (literal size or age)
When you place some adjectives before the noun, they often sound more:
- subjective, emotional, or poetic

So:

una niña pequeña is the standard, neutral way to say a little girl.
una pequeña niña is grammatically correct but sounds more literary, emotional, or stylized, not the natural choice in a sentence like this.

For everyday speech, una niña pequeña is what you want.

Why is it niña and not niño? Is it just because of mi hermana?

Exactly. In Spanish, nouns and adjectives usually agree in gender and number with the person or thing they refer to.

mi hermana → feminine, singular
niña → feminine, singular
pequeña → feminine, singular (agrees with niña)

If the subject were mi hermano, you’d say:

Cuando empieza a nevar, mi hermano se siente como un niño pequeño.

So:

feminine: una niña pequeña
masculine: un niño pequeño

Could I say Cuando nieva, mi hermana se siente como una niña pequeña instead of Cuando empieza a nevar? Is there a difference?

Yes, you can say that, and it’s correct. The difference is subtle:

Cuando empieza a nevar…
Focus on the moment when it starts to snow, the beginning of the snowfall.
Cuando nieva…
More general: whenever it’s snowing / when it snows (in general).

So:

Cuando empieza a nevar, mi hermana se siente como una niña pequeña.
When it starts to snow, my sister feels like a little girl.
Cuando nieva, mi hermana se siente como una niña pequeña.
When it snows (whenever it snows), my sister feels like a little girl.

Both are natural; you just choose where you want to put the emphasis.

What exactly does como mean here? Is it “like” or “as”? Are there alternatives?

In this sentence, como means “like” in the sense of making a comparison:

Se siente como una niña pequeña.
She feels like a little girl.

Common patterns:

como + noun
- Habla como un nativo. – He speaks like a native.
- Se siente como una estrella. – She feels like a star.

You could sometimes omit como and say se siente una niña pequeña, but as mentioned earlier, that slightly changes the nuance. For a simple comparison, como is the normal and best choice.

Is there any difference in how someone from Spain might say this compared to Latin America?

The sentence Cuando empieza a nevar, mi hermana se siente como una niña pequeña is perfectly natural in Spain and also understood everywhere in the Spanish‑speaking world.

Possible (non-obligatory) regional variations:

In many parts of Latin America people might use words like chica or nena instead of niña in informal speech:
- …se siente como una nena. (Argentina, for example)
- …se siente como una niña chiquita. (using chiquita instead of pequeña)

But your sentence is completely standard and neutral; it doesn’t mark a particular region.

How do you pronounce niña and nevar? What’s special about the letter ñ and the change in nevar?

Two things:

The letter ñ in niña
- ñ is a separate letter in Spanish, not just an n with an accent.
- It’s pronounced like the ny in “canyon”.
- niña ≈ NEE-nya.
The verb nevar and its forms
- The infinitive is nevar (with e), but in the present tense, it’s a stem‑changing verb (e → ie) in stressed syllables:
  - yo nievo
  - tú nievas
  - él/ella nieva
- In empieza a nevar, nevar is in the infinitive, so it keeps e (no change).
- The change happens only in conjugated forms where the e is stressed.