Learn Spanish (Latin America): El niño tiene el perro.

El niño tiene el perro.

The boy has the dog.

Breakdown of El niño tiene el perro.

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Questions & Answers about El niño tiene el perro.

The word order here matches English exactly. Is that the standard way to build a sentence in Spanish?

In basic sentences like this one, yes! El niño (the subject doing the action) comes first, followed by the verb tiene (has), and then el perro (the object receiving the action). This Subject-Verb-Object order is the most common way to state a fact in Spanish, just like in English.

How would I make this sentence negative and say "The boy doesn't have the dog"?

To make a Spanish sentence negative, you simply put the word no directly before the main verb. So, you would say El niño no tiene el perro. Unlike English, you don't need extra helping words like "doesn't" or "don't".

Where does the word tiene come from?

Tiene is the "he/she/it" form of the verb tener (to have). Tener is a very common irregular verb, meaning its spelling changes in ways that don't perfectly follow the normal rules. Because El niño is equivalent to "he", we use the tiene form.

Why do both niño and perro use el?

El is the singular masculine word for "the". Because both niño (boy) and perro (dog) are masculine, singular nouns, they both require el. If the sentence was about a girl and a female dog, it would change to use the feminine article la: La niña tiene la perra.