"El hombre come una manzana."
Translation:The man eats an apple.
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"El" without an accent is the definite article that means "the". So usually "el" comes before a noun. "Él" with the accent means "he", for example "Él come una manzana." (He eats an apple.)
To identify if the accent is necessary or not use context clues to find out if the "el" comes before a noun or if the "Él" itself is doing some kind of action.
The content of the sentence. Él
with the accent above the "E", is a pronoun meaning "He". El
without the accent "E", is an article and determiner of gender, meaning El
is the male version for "the". For example, El hombre
= "The man" compared to Él hombre
= "He man". The differences in the sentence structures would be: Él hombre come una manzana
= "He man eats an apple" which does not make sense and El hombre come una manzana
= "The man eats an apple" makes sense and is correct. Hope this helps!
In English it is quite simple: eat (present), ate (past simple), eaten (past participle)
In Spanish it is more complex xD there are several kinds of past tenses and, like you see in present simple, we have different words for each person and number.
In this case, since it is using present simple in Spanish, the corresponding tense should apply.
There are five types of verbs: -ar verbs, -er verbs, ir verbs, reflexive ones (-se) and what I like to call half reflexive verbs. We'll leave out the reflexive and half reflexive for now.
For regular -ar verbs, it's -o, -as, -a etc. (yo hablo, tú hablas, él habla [verb: hablar [to speak/talk])
For regular -er and -ir verbs, it's -o, -es, -e etc. (yo como, tú comes, él come [verb: comer (to eat]) (yo vivo, tú vives, él vive [verb: vivir (to live)]
The "una" is for the apple (manzana is a feminine word). "una manzana" means "an apple".
It's a good idea to read all the existing discussion for the sentences. Sometimes you'll find the answer you're looking for is already there, and sometimes you'll find interesting things you didn't even know you were looking for.
Spanish has three different regular verb forms.
The regular verbs ending in -ar (like hablar) use -a to end the third person singular. Yo hablo, tú hablas, él habla, nosotros hablamos, ellos hablan.
The regular verbs ending in -ir (like vivir) use -e to end the third person singular. Yo vivo, tú vives, él vive, nosotros vivimos, ellos viven.
The regular verbs ending in -er (like comer) also use -e to end the third person singular. Yo como, tú comes, él come, nosotros comemos, ellos comen.
You could confuse 'one' and 'a', but not 'one' and 'the'. 'The' is a defined article translated as el, la, los, las (depending on the gender and number of the noun). 'A' and 'one' are translated as 'uno' or 'una' (depending on the gender of the noun). Therefore:
- Una manzana == an/one apple
- La manzana == the apple