Questions & Answers about Mi padre quiere mejorar su español.
Why do we use mejorar instead of conjugating it like mejora?
In Spanish, when you want to say you want to do something, you conjugate the first verb (querer) to match the person, and leave the action they want to do in its basic dictionary form (the infinitive). Here, quiere means "he wants" and mejorar is the infinitive meaning "to improve". I know the verb "to want" is querer. Why does it change to quiere here?
querer is a stem-changing verb. This means a vowel in the middle of the root word changes when you conjugate it for most subjects. The e changes to ie, which is why "he wants" (referring to mi padre) becomes quiere instead of "quere". Why isn't the word español capitalized?
Unlike in English, Spanish does not capitalize the names of languages, days of the week, or nationalities unless they are the very first word in a sentence. So, "his Spanish" is written as su español with a lowercase e. How do I know su means "his" in this sentence?
The word su is a very flexible possessive word in Spanish! It can mean "his", "hers", "its", "their", or even the formal "your". You always have to use context to figure it out. Because the sentence is about mi padre (my father), it is clear that su español means "his Spanish". Learn Mi padre quiere mejorar su español and more in Spanish
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