El hotel tiene una recepción pequeña pero muy amable.

The hotel has a small but very friendly reception.

Breakdown of El hotel tiene una recepción pequeña pero muy amable.

• tener: to have
• pequeño: small
• una: a
• muy: very
• pero: but
• el hotel: the hotel
• la recepción: the reception
• amable: friendly

Questions & Answers about El hotel tiene una recepción pequeña pero muy amable.

Why is it El hotel tiene and not something like Hay una recepción pequeña…?

Both are possible, but they focus on different things:

• El hotel tiene una recepción… = “The hotel has a reception…”
  → Emphasizes the hotel’s features/possessions.

• En el hotel hay una recepción… = “There is a reception in the hotel…”
  → Emphasizes the existence of a reception in that location.

You normally don’t say El hotel hay… (that’s incorrect). With hay, you’d usually say En el hotel hay….
With tiene, the subject is clear: El hotel is the one that has this small but very friendly reception.

Why does El not have an accent, while I’ve also seen él with an accent?

• El (no accent) = the definite article “the”, used before masculine singular nouns:

  • El hotel, el coche, el perro.

• Él (with accent) = the pronoun “he” or “him”:

  • Él es amable = “He is kind.”

In your sentence, El hotel clearly needs the article (“the hotel”), not the pronoun, so there is no accent.

Why is it una recepción and not la recepción?

• Una recepción = a reception, introduces it as new, non‑specific information.

  • We’re just describing one of the hotel’s characteristics.

• La recepción = the reception, refers to a specific, already identified reception.

  • You’d use this if both speaker and listener already know which reception you are talking about, for example:
    
    • La recepción del hotel es pequeña. = “The hotel’s reception is small.”

In El hotel tiene una recepción pequeña…, we’re presenting this feature for the first time, so una is more natural.

What exactly does recepción mean here: the room, the desk, or the people?

In a hotel context, la recepción is a flexible word and can mean:

• The reception desk / counter
• The reception area / lobby where you check in
• The reception service or staff (the people who attend to you)

Native speakers often use la recepción to refer to all of this together. Context usually makes it clear. In your sentence, it’s easiest to understand it as “the reception area/service” in general.

Why is it recepción pequeña and not pequeña recepción, like “small reception” in English?

In Spanish, the normal order is:

noun + adjective → recepción pequeña

This is the standard, neutral way to give objective qualities (size, color, shape, etc.).

Putting the adjective before the noun is also possible but usually adds a subjective, poetic, or emphatic nuance:

• una pequeña recepción
  → more “literary” or “stylistic”; could sound like you’re emotionally coloring it a bit, or talking about it more as a concept than as a plain physical description.

So:

• una recepción pequeña = neutral description: “a small reception (in size)”.
• una pequeña recepción = possible, but more marked in style; in everyday speech most people would say una recepción pequeña.

Why does pequeña end in -a, but amable stays the same?

Adjectives in Spanish usually agree with the noun in gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural).

• recepción is feminine singular → la recepción
• Therefore, pequeña must also be feminine singular (pequeño → pequeña).

Amable, however, is an adjective that has one form for both masculine and feminine in the singular:

• el chico amable / la chica amable
• el hotel amable / la recepción amable

Only the plural changes:

• las recepciones amables
• los empleados amables

So:

• pequeña changes to match the feminine noun.
• amable doesn’t change for gender, only for plural (amables).

Why is pero used here instead of y or sino?

• pero = “but”, introduces a contrast between two characteristics:

  • pequeña (small) vs muy amable (very friendly); one might see “small” as a possible disadvantage, and pero softens that with a positive quality.

• y = “and”, just adds information without contrast:

  • una recepción pequeña y muy amable
    → possible, but it sounds like both are equally positive or neutral qualities; it loses the slight “compensating contrast” of pero.

• sino is used mainly after a negation to mean “but rather / but instead”:

  • No es grande, sino pequeña. = “It’s not big, but rather small.”
    Since your sentence is not correcting a previous negation, sino would be wrong here.

So pero is perfect to say: “It’s small, but (on the other hand) very friendly.”

Is it natural in Spanish to describe a recepción as amable, even though “amable” usually describes people?

Yes, it’s natural, especially in hotel or service contexts.

There are two ideas at work:

1. Metonymy:
   La recepción can refer to the reception staff. So:

   • La recepción es muy amable.
     ≈ “The reception staff are very kind.”

2. Spanish often extends human adjectives to places/services:

   • una ciudad acogedora = a welcoming city
   • un ambiente agradable = a pleasant atmosphere

So una recepción muy amable is understood as “a reception (service) that treats you kindly,” and it sounds normal in Spain. You could also make it explicit:

• El personal de recepción es muy amable. = “The reception staff are very kind.”

Why is there no verb before muy amable? Why not …pequeña pero es muy amable?

Spanish (like English) can omit a repeated verb when it’s clearly understood:

• Full version: El hotel tiene una recepción pequeña pero (tiene una recepción) muy amable.
• Spoken/written: El hotel tiene una recepción pequeña pero muy amable.

English does something similar:

• “The hotel has a small but very friendly reception.”
  (You don’t say “has a small but has a very friendly reception.”)

If you say …pero es muy amable, you slightly change the structure:

• El hotel tiene una recepción pequeña, pero es muy amable.
  Grammatically OK, but es then sounds like it refers to el hotel (“but it [the hotel] is very friendly”), which is a bit odd.
  To make es refer to the reception, you’d normally say:
  
  • La recepción es pequeña pero muy amable.

Where does muy go with adjectives like amable? Could you say amable muy?

No. In Spanish, muy (very) almost always comes before the adjective or adverb:

• muy amable, muy grande, muy bien, muy lejos.

Amable muy is incorrect in normal Spanish.

So:

• ✅ muy amable
• ❌ amable muy

Only in very marked, poetic language you might sometimes see unusual orders, but for normal Spanish, always muy + adjective.

Should there be a comma before pero, like una recepción pequeña, pero muy amable?

In this short sentence, the comma is optional, and most native speakers would not use it here:

• El hotel tiene una recepción pequeña pero muy amable.
  → Most common, fully correct.

A comma before pero is more common when:

• The two parts are longer, or
• It helps clarity, or
• You want a small pause for emphasis.

For example:

• La recepción es pequeña, pero el servicio es excelente.

In your specific sentence, no comma is the most natural choice.

How would the sentence change if we talked about several hotels?

There are a couple of natural options, depending on what you mean:

1. Each hotel has its own small but friendly reception (focus on each individually):

   • Cada hotel tiene una recepción pequeña pero muy amable.

2. All the receptions are small and friendly (focus on the group):

   • Los hoteles tienen recepciones pequeñas pero muy amables.

Notice the agreement changes:

• hotel → hoteles
• recepción → recepciones
• pequeña → pequeñas
• amable → amables (plural)