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

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

• una: a
• mi: my
• cuando: when

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).

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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.

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