El hombre vive en las afueras.

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Breakdown of El hombre vive en las afueras.

• vivir: to live
• el hombre: the man
• las afueras: the outskirts

Questions & Answers about El hombre vive en las afueras.

Why is it el hombre and not just hombre?

In Spanish, nouns often need an article where English might not use one. El hombre means the man. If you said just hombre, it would usually sound incomplete in a normal sentence like this.

What does vive mean, and what form is it?

Vive comes from the verb vivir, meaning to live. Here it is the third-person singular present form, so it means he lives or the man lives.

• yo vivo = I live
• tú vives = you live
• él / ella vive = he / she lives

Because the subject is el hombre, the verb has to be vive.

Why doesn’t Spanish say the subject pronoun él here?

Spanish often leaves out subject pronouns because the verb ending already shows who the subject is. Since vive clearly matches he/she/it, and the sentence already includes el hombre, adding él would be unnecessary.

So:

• El hombre vive en las afueras. = natural
• Él vive en las afueras. = also possible, but only if you want to stress he