Learn Spanish (Spain): El niño juega al lado de la lámpara.

El niño juega al lado de la lámpara.

The boy plays next to the lamp.

Breakdown of El niño juega al lado de la lámpara.

Questions & Answers about El niño juega al lado de la lámpara.

Why does the sentence use al lado de instead of just a lado de?

The phrase al lado de literally translates to "at the side of". Because lado (side) is a masculine noun, it needs the article el (the). In Spanish, the preposition a (at/to) and el always combine into the mandatory contraction al.

Do I always need to include de after al lado?

You need de (of) here because you are stating exactly what the boy is next to (the lamp). If you just wanted to say "The boy plays to the side" or "The boy plays next door" without naming the object, you would drop it and just say El niño juega al lado.

Why is the verb juega instead of juga?

The verb jugar (to play) is a stem-changing verb. In the present tense, its u changes to ue for most pronouns. Because el niño acts as "he", we use the changed form juega. (Remember that "we" and "you all" keep the original vowel: jugamos, jugáis).

Why does lámpara have an accent mark?

Words that end in a vowel normally stress the second-to-last syllable (lam-PA-ra). However, this word is pronounced with the stress on the third-to-last syllable (LAM-pa-ra). The written accent mark tells you to break the normal pronunciation rule and stress that first part of the word.