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El niño lee unos minutos.

El niño lee unos minutos.
The boy reads for a few minutes.
From Lesson 28:How much and how many (cuánto)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about El niño lee unos minutos.

How would I ask "How many minutes does the boy read?" based on this sentence?
You would use the question word cuántos (how many). Because minutos is a masculine and plural noun, the interrogative adjective must match it. The question becomes: ¿Cuántos minutos lee el niño?
The English translation says "reads for a few minutes", but I don't see a word for "for" in Spanish. Why?
In Spanish, you often don't need a preposition like "for" when talking about how long an action lasts. Saying lee unos minutos literally means "he reads a few minutes", which is perfectly natural in Spanish. You can use por (lee por unos minutos), but leaving it out is very common.
I learned that unos means "some". Does it also mean "a few"?
Yes! Unos (and its feminine form unas) translates to "some", but it is also the most common way to say "a few". When talking about amounts of time, like unos minutos, thinking of it as "a few minutes" usually makes the most sense in English.
Why does the verb lee have two E's?
The infinitive (dictionary form) of the verb is leer (to read). To conjugate regular verbs ending in -er for él (he), you take the stem by dropping the -er (which leaves just le-), and then you add the ending -e. Putting the stem and the ending together gives you lee.

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