El hombre dice: «Buenos días».

In Spanish, it is very common to use the definite article where English might not.

• el = the
• hombre = man

So el hombre means the man.

If you said just hombre, it would usually sound incomplete here, unless you were using it in a special context, like a label, headline, or exclamation.

Also, hombre is a masculine singular noun, so it takes el, not la.

Nouns in Spanish have grammatical gender, and hombre is a masculine noun.

That is why it uses:

• el hombre = the man

This matches natural gender too, since hombre refers to a male person. The feminine equivalent is:

• la mujer = the woman

A learner often notices that -o words are often masculine, and hombre fits that pattern.

In standard Spanish, the h is silent, so hombre is pronounced roughly like:

• OM-bre

More precisely:

• hom- sounds like om-
• -bre has a tapped Spanish r, not an English r

The stress is on the first syllable:

• HOM-bre

So although it is written with h, you do not pronounce that letter.

Spanish often leaves out subject pronouns when they are not needed.

• dice already means he says, she says, or it says

Because the verb ending tells you the subject is third person singular, Spanish does not need él here unless you want emphasis or contrast.

So:

• El hombre dice = The man says
• El hombre él dice would sound unnatural in normal Spanish

You could say Él dice in another context, but here el hombre already gives the subject.

Dice is the present tense of decir for he/she/it.

• decir = to say
• dice = he says / she says / it says

In Spanish, the present tense is often used in narration where English might also say says:

• El hombre dice... = The man says...

Other options would change the meaning or feel:

• dijo = he said (past)
• está diciendo = he is saying (ongoing action, more explicit)

So dice is the normal choice if the sentence is simply reporting what the man says.

The colon introduces the exact words that come next.

So:

• El hombre dice: = The man says:
• then the exact words follow: Buenos días

This works similarly to English. Spanish also uses a colon before a direct quotation in many cases.

Those are called angle quotes or guillemets.

In Spain, they are a standard and very traditional way to mark quotations:

• «Buenos días»

You may also see other quotation marks in Spanish, especially in digital writing or Latin America:

• "Buenos días"
• ‘Buenos días’

But in Spanish typography, especially in Spain, « » are very common and often preferred in formal writing.

Buenos días is the standard greeting in Spain for good morning.

It is a fixed expression, and it is plural:

• buenos = masculine plural form of bueno
• días = days

Even though English says good morning in the singular, Spanish uses the plural expression Buenos días.

In Spain, Buen día is not the usual greeting. You may hear it in some other Spanish-speaking regions, but in Spain Buenos días is the normal form.

Because it agrees with días, which is plural.

In Spanish, adjectives usually agree in gender and number with the noun they describe.

• singular masculine: buen día
• plural masculine: buenos días

Since días is masculine plural, the adjective must also be masculine plural:

• buenos

This is basic adjective agreement.

The accent mark in día is important because it shows the stress pattern and helps separate the vowels.

Without going too deeply into spelling theory, here is the key point:

• día is pronounced in two syllables: DÍ-a
• plural: días = DÍ-as

The written accent tells you that the stress falls on dí.

So the greeting is pronounced roughly:

• BWE-nos DÍ-as

That accent should always be written.

A simple approximation is:

• BWE-nos DÍ-as

A bit more detail:

• bue- sounds like bwe
• -nos is like nos
• dí- is stressed
• -as is a separate syllable

So it has four syllables:

• BUE-nos DÍ-as

In connected speech in Spain, the d in días can sound softer than an English d, especially between vowels, but learners do not need to exaggerate that at first.

In Spain, Buenos días is used in the morning, and often until around lunchtime.

A rough guide is:

• Buenos días = morning
• Buenas tardes = afternoon
• Buenas noches = evening/night

Exact timing can vary a bit by region and situation, but Buenos días is the normal polite greeting earlier in the day.

It is capitalized because it starts the quoted speech after the colon.

So in:

• El hombre dice: «Buenos días».

the greeting begins the direct quotation, and the first word is written with a capital letter: Buenos.

In the middle of a sentence without quotation, greetings are not automatically capitalized unless normal capitalization rules require it.

In this sentence, the period is placed outside the closing angle quotes:

• El hombre dice: «Buenos días».

That is a common Spanish punctuation practice when the quoted words are part of the larger sentence structure.

English punctuation rules often place periods inside quotation marks, but Spanish does not always do that in the same way. So this can look unusual to English speakers.

Yes, grammatically you could. The structure would still be correct:

• El hombre dice: «Hola».

But Hola and Buenos días are not exactly the same in use.

• Hola = hello
• Buenos días = good morning

In Spain, Buenos días is a very normal polite greeting in the morning, especially with people you do not know well, in shops, at work, and in formal or neutral situations. Hola is more general and can feel less formal depending on context.