Learn Spanish (Spain): El chico abre la puerta.

El chico abre la puerta.

The boy opens the door.

Breakdown of El chico abre la puerta.

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Questions & Answers about El chico abre la puerta.

The dictionary form of the verb is abrir (to open). Why does it become abre here?

Abrir is a regular "-ir" verb. To talk about what "he" (in this case, El chico) does, we drop the "-ir" ending and add "-e". This gives us abre. You might remember that regular "-er" and "-ir" verbs both use the "-e" ending for "he/she/it".

If I wanted to say "I open the door", would I still use abre?

No, verbs change their endings based on who is doing the action. To say "I open", you drop the "-ir" from abrir and add "-o", making it abro. You would say Yo abro la puerta.

Can abre also translate to "is opening"?

Yes! In Spanish, the simple present tense often covers both actions that happen regularly ("opens") and actions happening right now ("is opening"). So El chico abre la puerta can mean "The boy opens the door" or "The boy is opening the door" depending on the context.

Why do we use El for the boy but la for the door?

This is a quick reminder about noun gender. Chico (boy) is a masculine word, so it takes the masculine article el (the). Puerta (door) is a feminine word, which you can usually guess because it ends in "-a", so it takes the feminine article la (the).