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Hoy mi abuela ha cumplido noventa años.

Hoy mi abuela ha cumplido noventa años.
Today my grandmother has turned ninety.
From Lesson 131:Celebrations (¡feliz cumpleaños!, la Navidad)·Spanish (Spain)

Questions & Answers about Hoy mi abuela ha cumplido noventa años.

Why is the verb ha cumplido (has turned) used here instead of the simple past tense?
Because the sentence starts with Hoy (Today). In Spain, when an action happens in an unfinished time period (like today, this week, or this year), you use the present perfect tense (ha cumplido) rather than the simple past.
Why does Spanish use the verb cumplir to talk about turning an age?
The verb cumplir literally means to complete or to achieve. In Spanish, you do not turn or become an age; you complete another year of life. This is also why the Spanish word for birthday is cumpleaños (literally completes years).
In English we can just say someone turned ninety, so why is años required here?
In Spanish, it sounds incomplete to just say ha cumplido noventa. Because the verb means to complete, you usually need to specify what is being completed, which in this case is años (years).
Does the number noventa change its ending if it describes a feminine word?
No. Unlike numbers in the hundreds (like doscientos or doscientas), the tens numbers ending in -enta like noventa (ninety) and ochenta (eighty) never change their endings to match gender. They stay exactly the same for both masculine and feminine words.

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