Learn Spanish (Spain): Ellos comen queso y carne.

Ellos comen queso y carne.

They eat cheese and meat.

Breakdown of Ellos comen queso y carne.

to eat; to have lunch

el queso

the cheese

Questions & Answers about Ellos comen queso y carne.

How do we get the form comen from the verb comer?

Comer (to eat) is a regular -er verb. To make it match ellos (they), you drop the -er from the end to get the base com-, and then add the plural ending -en. This gives us comen.

Do I have to include the word ellos in this sentence?

No, you could just say Comen queso y carne. Because the verb ending -en already tells us the subject is 'they' (or formal 'you all'), Spanish speakers often drop the pronoun unless they need to emphasize it or avoid confusion.

Why don't we say el queso and la carne here?

Just like in English, we leave out the article (like el or la) when we are talking about an unspecified amount of something. Because they are eating 'cheese and meat' in general, not 'the' specific cheese and meat, we do not use articles here.

Is carne masculine or feminine since it ends in -e?

Words ending in -e can be either masculine or feminine, so you just have to learn their gender as you go. Carne is feminine, so if you needed to say 'the meat', it would be la carne.