El chico quiere bañarse.

to want

Breakdown of El chico quiere bañarse.

• el chico: the boy
• bañarse: to take a bath

Questions & Answers about El chico quiere bañarse.

Why is El not él?

Because they are two different words:

• el = the (article)
• él = he (subject pronoun)

In El chico quiere bañarse, El is the article belonging to chico, so it means the boy.

A useful detail: even at the beginning of a sentence, él keeps its accent if it is the pronoun. So El chico... is correct, but Él quiere... would mean He wants....

Why is it quiere and not querer?

Querer is the infinitive, the dictionary form, meaning to want.
Here the verb has to match the subject el chico, so it must be conjugated:

• yo quiero
• tú quieres
• él/ella quiere
• nosotros queremos
• vosotros queréis
• ellos quieren

Since el chico = he, the correct form is quiere.

Also, querer is a stem-changing verb in the present tense: e → ie in most forms, which is why it becomes quiere, not quere.

Why is bañarse in the infinitive after ?