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El perro que ladra mucho debe de tener hambre.

El perro que ladra mucho debe de tener hambre.
The dog that barks a lot must be hungry.
From Lesson 232:Supposition (deber de)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about El perro que ladra mucho debe de tener hambre.

Why is it debe de tener and not just debe tener?
In Spanish, adding de after deber changes the meaning from an obligation to a strong probability or assumption. Here, you are assuming the dog is hungry because it is barking, rather than saying the dog is required to be hungry. While you will often hear native speakers drop the de in everyday conversation, deber de is the precise way to express a deduction.
Why does the sentence use tener instead of a verb for 'to be' when saying the dog must 'be' hungry?
In Spanish, physical feelings like hunger, thirst, and cold are expressed with the verb tener (to have) plus a noun, rather than ser or estar (to be) plus an adjective. tener hambre literally means 'to have hunger'. So, debe de tener hambre translates directly as 'it must have hunger'.
Would it be correct to use the subjunctive ladre instead of the indicative ladra here?
It depends on what you mean! Using the indicative ladra tells us the speaker has a specific, real dog in mind (likely one they can hear right now). If you used the subjunctive ladre, it would change the meaning to a hypothetical statement about any unknown dog: 'Any dog that barks a lot must be hungry'.
Does the word mucho need to match the gender of the dog?
No, because in this sentence mucho is an adverb. It modifies the verb ladra to tell us how much the dog barks. Adverbs never change their gender or number. The word mucho only changes to mucha, muchos, or muchas when it acts as an adjective describing a noun (like in the phrase 'muchos perros').

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