Breakdown of Tengo una amiga que lee novelas largas y poesía moderna.
Questions & Answers about Tengo una amiga que lee novelas largas y poesía moderna.
In Spanish the subject pronoun (yo, tú, él, etc.) is usually dropped because the verb ending already shows who the subject is.
- Tengo already tells us it’s “I have” (1st person singular).
- Yo tengo is not wrong, but it’s only used when you want to emphasize “I” (e.g. in contrast to someone else):
- Yo tengo una amiga que lee… (I do have a friend who reads…, as opposed to you).
In neutral statements, tengo without yo is more natural.
Spanish nouns have grammatical gender.
- amigo = male friend
- amiga = female friend
So una amiga specifically means “a (female) friend.”
If the friend were male, you’d say un amigo.
The article matches the gender:
- un amigo
- una amiga
You normally must use an article with singular countable nouns in Spanish.
- Tengo una amiga = I have a (one) friend.
- Tengo amiga sounds incomplete/incorrect in standard Spanish.
There are very limited special cases where the article can be dropped, but this is not one of them. For “I have a friend,” you need una.
Both que and quien can refer to people, but they’re used differently:
- que is the default relative pronoun (“who/that”) and is used after common nouns like una amiga:
- Tengo una amiga que lee… = I have a friend who reads…
- quien is more formal and is used mostly after prepositions or with people already clearly defined:
- La persona a quien escribí = the person to whom I wrote
In everyday Spanish, after una amiga, you say que lee, not quien lee.
The verb must agree with the subject of the relative clause:
- Subject: una amiga (singular, 3rd person)
- Verb: lee (3rd person singular of leer in the present)
So:
- Tengo una amiga que lee… = I have a friend who reads…
If the subject were plural:
- Tengo unas amigas que leen novelas largas…
- “I have some (female) friends who read long novels…”
Leo = “I read,” so it would be wrong here because the reader is the friend, not you.
The personal a is used mainly when a person is the direct object of verbs like “see,” “know,” “visit,” etc.:
- Veo a mi amiga. = I see my friend.
- Conozco a tu hermano. = I know your brother.
But with tener (“to have”), Spanish normally does not use the personal a:
- Tengo una amiga. (correct)
- Tengo a una amiga. (usually wrong or sounds odd in standard usage)
So here, tengo una amiga is the normal form.
Two different ideas:
novelas (novels) is a countable noun:
- You can have one novel or several novels → novelas.
- novelas largas = long novels (in general).
poesía (poetry) is usually treated as an uncountable mass noun, like “music” or “furniture” in English:
- poesía = poetry (in general).
- poesía moderna = modern poetry.
You can say poesías modernas when referring to individual poems or individual types of poetry, but for the general idea of poetry as a genre, the usual form is poesía (singular).
Both are possible, but they mean slightly different things:
- Lee poesía moderna.
- She reads modern poetry in general (not specifying any particular body of work).
- Lee la poesía moderna.
- More like “She reads modern poetry (as a defined category/field).”
- It can sound a bit more specific or theoretical, depending on context.
In this sentence, poesía moderna without the article feels more like a broad, general interest, matching the general novelas largas.
In Spanish, adjectives usually go after the noun:
- novelas largas = long novels
- poesía moderna = modern poetry
You can put some adjectives before the noun, but that often adds a special nuance (emotional, subjective, stylistic, etc.), or is restricted to a few very common adjectives.
- largas novelas could sound more poetic or emphatic, sometimes with a sense like “endless novels” or “those long-winded novels,” depending on context.
- The neutral, standard description is novelas largas.
So the normal word order here is noun + adjective.
Spanish works just like English in this case: one verb can govern multiple objects joined by y (and):
- que lee novelas largas y poesía moderna
= who reads long novels and modern poetry.
You could repeat the verb, but it’s longer and unnecessary unless you want to emphasize something:
- que lee novelas largas y lee poesía moderna
This is grammatically correct but sounds more repetitive; the original is more natural.
You can, but it means something slightly different:
novelas largas y poesía moderna
- She reads two different types of things: long novels and modern poetry.
novelas largas y modernas
- Now both adjectives describe novelas: she reads novels that are both long and modern.
- It doesn’t say anything about poetry at all.
So use the original if you want: long novels + modern poetry as two separate categories.
No. In Spanish, you cannot omit the relative pronoun que here.
- Tengo una amiga que lee novelas largas… (correct)
- Tengo una amiga lee novelas largas… (incorrect)
Unlike English in some informal structures, Spanish requires que in this type of sentence.
Spanish accent marks show where the stress falls when it breaks the normal stress rules.
- poesía is stressed on the í: po-e-SÍ-a
- Without the accent, by default it would be stressed on the second-to-last syllable (poe-si-a), which is wrong.
- So it needs í with an accent: poesía.
- novelas → no-VE-las (stress naturally on the second-to-last syllable, ends in -s → follows the rule, no accent needed).
- amiga → a-MI-ga (stress on second-to-last syllable, ends in vowel → follows the rule, no accent needed).
So only poesía needs a written accent to mark the correct stress.