Word
Las cigüeñas migran en invierno.
Meaning
The storks migrate in winter.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Las cigüeñas migran en invierno.
en
in
el invierno
the winter
la cigüeña
the stork
migrar
to migrate
Questions & Answers about Las cigüeñas migran en invierno.
Why does the sentence start with las?
Las is the plural definite article, meaning the.
In Spanish, it’s very common to use the definite article with plural nouns when talking about a whole class of animals or things in general. So:
Even though English often drops the in general statements, Spanish often keeps it.
Why is it cigüeñas and not something like cigueñas?
The ü is very important here.
In Spanish, gue and gui normally make the u silent:
- guerra sounds like geh-rra
- guitarra sounds like gee-tarra
But when Spanish wants the u to be pronounced in gue or gui, it adds a diaeresis: ü
So:
- cigüeña is pronounced roughly thee-GWEN-ya in much of Spain
- without the dots, the pronunciation would be different
The ü tells you to pronounce the u.
Why does cigüeñas have an ñ?