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- "Él toma mi comida."
92 Comments
Tomar is used for eating and drinking
"Tomo alcohol" is "I drink alcohol"
"Tomo comida" is "I eat food"
If you really want to mean that someone takes your food, you should probably say "Roba mi comida" (Literally, that he steals it) or "Acepta mi comida" (to imply that I gave it to him)
One external reference: http://www.elearnspanishlanguage.com/grammar/verb/vc-tomar.html
I'm not a native speaker, but I've studied it for several years, and I'm just on this website to review it since it's been a few years since the last time I used it. Both of the Mexican-born Spanish teachers I have had used tomar more commonly than either comer or beber as a means of describing consumption of food. I am extremely confident that what I just posted is correct. (Except the part about using aceptar. I'm not sure how to naturally say 'he took my food with my permission' in either language: "Le ofrezco mi comida y la acepta" -- "I offered him my food and he accepted it" -- seems more natural to me than trying to say it with the emphasis on the person taking the food)
the best way to think about this one, i feel, is to imagine it's victorian; to 'take one's medicine', or 'do you take milk in your tea?'. i also like think of 'toma' as 'par-take of'. Someone mentioned it's idiomatic, i suspect they are right. To be fair, english has has enough synonyms for eating and drinking, to allow spannish a few. All of them have enough shades of meaning to confuse non natives,- consume, munch, scoff, swallow, ingest, partake of, devour, gobble, wolf. I mean, what does a furry pack animal, or the noise a turkey makes, have to do with the verb to eat?!?
We usually say, "We eat food.", but we often say "We have lunch." to mean that we eat lunch rather than possess it. In Spanish, the expression "toma" is much like "has" or "have" when used this way for food or drinks. I like the reference to the old "partake of" as that could also be used with regards to a meal. We still use "I take medicine." which does translate perfectly into "Tomo...." to mean "ingest".
Llevar is mostly used to say: Carry. Take is another way of saying carry in English but not a good direct translation.
This article seems a good read since it explains verbs that sound like they mean the same thing.
Llevar y Tomar are at the bottom http://spanish.about.com/cs/vocabulary/a/moreverbpairs.htm
Hope that helps!
986
"Takes in" has a different sense than "takes." If someone "takes in your food," they might be taking it from outside to inside (in which case it's more likely "He takes my food in"), or they might be "taking it in" as part of a survey: "He looks over the kitchen and takes in [as in "notices] your food."
Neither of these senses is conveyed by the use of "tomar" here.
269
Where I live, a lot of Spanish speakers say, "lonche." I don't know if that is just a CA Spanish thing.
I'm in Sonora, and lonche is used here on occasion. Almuerzo, not so much. I think the reason is that lunch is an American thing, not a Mexican thing. They have breakfast (desayuno), and that is generally followed with dinner (comida) and in the evening it is supper (cena). The comida is the big meal of the day, and it usually happens sometime early to mid afternoon.