Me duele el codo.

Breakdown of Me duele el codo.

doler
to hurt / to ache
el codo
the elbow

Questions & Answers about Me duele el codo.

Why do we use me duele instead of yo duele?
Doler (to hurt) works just like gustar. Instead of saying "I hurt my elbow," the Spanish phrasing is closer to "The elbow causes pain to me." The pronoun me shows who is feeling the pain, while the elbow is actually the subject of the sentence.
If I wanted to say "my elbows hurt," would it be me duelen los codos?
Exactly! Because doler functions like gustar, the verb must match the thing that is hurting. Since los codos (the elbows) is plural, you change the verb to the plural form duelen.
The translation says "my elbow," but el codo literally means "the elbow." Why don't we use mi codo?
In Spanish, when talking about body parts, you almost always use the definite article (el, la, los, las) instead of a possessive word like mi (my). The pronoun me at the start of the sentence already makes it perfectly clear whose elbow is hurting!
Why does duele have a "ue" in it? What is the infinitive form of this verb?
The dictionary form (infinitive) is doler. It is a stem-changing verb, which means the vowel o in the middle changes to ue when you conjugate it. You might remember this same pattern from verbs like dormir (to sleep) becoming duerme or poder (to be able to) becoming puede.

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