Breakdown of En la granja, mi prima aprende a cuidar ovejas y vacas todos los días.
Questions & Answers about En la granja, mi prima aprende a cuidar ovejas y vacas todos los días.
In Spanish, you almost always need an article (like el / la / un / una) before a singular countable noun.
- En la granja = On/at the farm (a specific farm that both speakers know about, or the usual farm she goes to).
- En una granja = On/at a farm (some farm, not specified which one).
Saying En granja (without an article) is generally incorrect in standard Spanish. The article is needed, whereas in English you can sometimes omit it (“at school”, “in hospital”, etc.).
With family members, Spanish commonly uses a possessive adjective (mi, tu, su, nuestro…) to show whose relative it is:
- mi prima = my (female) cousin
- la prima = the cousin (some random cousin, or “the” cousin in a particular context, but not clearly “my” cousin)
In this sentence, we want to say my cousin, so mi prima is correct. If you said la prima, the listener would wonder “whose cousin?”.
The -a ending in prima marks it as feminine:
- prima = female cousin
- primo = male cousin
The verb aprende doesn’t change with gender; it only changes with person and number:
- Mi prima aprende… = My (female) cousin learns…
- Mi primo aprende… = My (male) cousin learns…
Everything else in the sentence would stay the same.
The verb form must match the subject:
- Subject: mi prima → 3rd person singular (“she”)
- Verb: aprende → 3rd person singular of aprender in the present tense
Some comparisons:
- Yo aprendo = I learn
- Tú aprendes = You learn (informal singular)
- Él / Ella / Mi prima aprende = He / She / My cousin learns
- Nosotros aprendemos = We learn
- Ellos / Mis primas aprenden = They / My (female) cousins learn
So mi prima aprende is the correct agreement.
Spanish uses the normal present simple to talk about habitual or repeated actions, just like English often does:
- Mi prima aprende a cuidar ovejas y vacas todos los días.
→ My cousin learns / is learning to take care of sheep and cows every day.
Todos los días tells us it’s a repeated action. There is no special “habitual tense” in Spanish; the regular present does that job.
With aprender followed by another verb in the infinitive, Spanish normally uses a:
- aprender a + infinitive = to learn to + verb
So:
- aprende a cuidar = she learns to look after
Aprende cuidar (without a) sounds wrong to native speakers.
Aprende para cuidar would mean something more like she learns in order to look after, focusing on the purpose, not the structure “learn to do X”.
The standard pattern you should memorize is:
- aprender a hablar, aprender a conducir, aprender a cocinar, aprender a cuidar, etc.
Cuidar is a transitive verb: you take care of something/someone.
- cuidar algo / a alguien = to look after something/someone
- cuidar ovejas y vacas = to look after sheep and cows
Cuidarse is the reflexive form: to take care of oneself.
- cuidarse = to take care of oneself
- Me cuido mucho. = I take good care of myself.
Since your cousin is taking care of the animals (not herself), you need the non‑reflexive cuidar.
Both are possible, but they sound a bit different:
- cuidar ovejas y vacas
→ More general / undefined: to take care of sheep and cows (some, in general) - cuidar las ovejas y las vacas
→ More specific: to take care of the sheep and the cows (the ones we’re talking about or that are on that farm)
In everyday speech, it’s very common to drop the article after verbs like cuidar, tener, criar, comer when we mean animals or things in a general/non‑specific way.
Here the focus is on the type of work she is learning to do (taking care of sheep and cows in general), so no article sounds very natural.
Yes. Spanish word order is fairly flexible, especially with time and place expressions. All of these are grammatically correct, with small differences in emphasis:
- En la granja, mi prima aprende a cuidar ovejas y vacas todos los días.
(Place first, then subject; neutral, quite natural.) - Mi prima aprende a cuidar ovejas y vacas en la granja todos los días.
(Subject first; similar meaning.) - Mi prima aprende todos los días a cuidar ovejas y vacas en la granja.
(Stronger emphasis on “every day”.)
Spanish often puts time expressions like todos los días, siempre, a menudo near the verb, but at the beginning or end of the sentence is also possible.
The singular is día and the plural is días, always with an accent on í.
The accent is there because of how the word is stressed and because ía would normally be read as two syllables that might stress differently. The accent tells you:
- Pronunciation: DÍ‑as (two syllables, stress on the first)
- Spelling: you keep the accent in the plural (día → días).
You don’t need to worry about the full accent rule system right away; just memorize common words like día / días, país / países, tío / tíos with their accents.
In Spain, granja is the standard word for a farm, especially one with animals:
- granja = farm (often with animals, dairy farms, etc.)
Other terms:
- finca = a property/estate in the countryside; can be farmland, but also a country house with land.
- rancho is much more common in Latin America; in Spain it can sound American‑Western or Latin‑American.
So for European Spanish, en la granja is the most natural everyday choice for “on the farm”.
En describes being in / on / at a place:
- en la granja = on/at the farm (location)
A normally expresses movement towards a place:
- Voy a la granja. = I’m going to the farm.
In your sentence, you’re describing where the action happens (location), not movement toward the place, so en la granja is correct.
Both mean every day, but there are slight nuances:
- todos los días
- Very common in speech and writing
- Neutral and natural in almost any context
- cada día
- Also correct
- Can sometimes sound a bit more individualizing (day by day) or a little more formal/literary depending on context
In your sentence, both are possible:
- …ovejas y vacas todos los días.
- …ovejas y vacas cada día.
Todos los días is probably the most common colloquial choice.