El hombre habla alemán.

Because Spanish usually needs an article before a singular countable noun in a normal sentence.

• el hombre = the man
• Just hombre on its own would sound incomplete here.

So El hombre habla alemán is the natural way to say The man speaks German.

Because hombre is a masculine noun, so it takes the masculine singular definite article el.

• el = the for masculine singular nouns
• la = the for feminine singular nouns

Examples:

• el hombre = the man
• la mujer = the woman

Habla is the third-person singular present tense form of hablar.

So it can mean:

• he speaks
• she speaks
• it speaks
• you speak (formal singular, usted)

In this sentence, because the subject is el hombre, habla means the man speaks.

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

The verb ending already tells you the person and number, and here the subject is also clearly stated as el hombre.

So Spanish says:

• El hombre habla alemán.

It would usually be unnecessary to say:

• El hombre él habla alemán. ❌

You could say Él habla alemán, but only when él is the subject by itself or when you want emphasis or contrast.

In Spanish, names of languages are normally not capitalized.

So:

• alemán = German
• español = Spanish
• inglés = English

This is different from English, where language names are capitalized.

The accent mark shows where the stress falls: a-le-MÁN.

Without the accent, standard Spanish stress rules would make you stress a different syllable, so the written accent is needed.

It also helps distinguish the correct pronunciation and spelling of the word.

Because here alemán means the German language, not German as an adjective describing the man.

So in:

• El hombre habla alemán

alemán = German as a language.

It does not agree with hombre. It stays the name of the language.

Compare:

• El hombre es alemán = The man is German
  Here alemán describes the man, so it is an adjective.

• La mujer es alemana = The woman is German
  Here it changes to alemana because it agrees with mujer.

But:

• La mujer habla alemán = The woman speaks German
  The language name stays alemán.

After hablar, language names are usually used without an article.

So Spanish normally says:

• habla alemán
• habla español
• habla inglés

Using el here would usually sound wrong in a basic sentence like this.

So:

• Habla alemán = He speaks German
• Habla el alemán ❌ in this context

Spanish word order is more flexible than English, but the neutral, most natural order here is:

• El hombre habla alemán.

You can change the order in some contexts, but it changes the emphasis or sounds more marked:

• Habla alemán el hombre. = possible, but unusual without context
• Alemán habla el hombre. = not natural here

For a basic statement, El hombre habla alemán is the best choice.

The h in Spanish is normally silent.

So hombre is pronounced roughly like:

• OM-breh

Not like English home-bre.

A few helpful points:

• the h is silent
• the o is a pure vowel
• the r in -bre is lightly tapped in standard pronunciation

A simple guide is:

• el OM-breh AB-la a-le-MÁN

A slightly more natural connected pronunciation would sound like:

• elombre abla alemán

A few pronunciation notes:

• el has a short e
• hombre has a silent h
• habla also has a silent h
• alemán is stressed on the last syllable because of the accent mark

Yes. The Spanish present tense can often translate in more than one way depending on context.

So habla can mean:

• speaks
• is speaking
• sometimes even does speak for emphasis

In this sentence, the most natural translation is speaks, but context could allow is speaking German in some situations.

Here it functions as the name of a language, so you can think of it as a noun.

Compare these two uses:

• Habla alemán.
  Here alemán = German (the language)

• Es alemán.
  Here alemán = German (an adjective meaning nationality)

This is why learners often notice that the same word can behave differently depending on the sentence.