"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!
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Use "an" only when the word begins with a vowel sound:
An apple
An orange
A man
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Or if the word is spelled beginning with a consonant but the consonant is silent, like "an herb" (in American English)
My first impression of this sentence was, "The man ate an apple" but it seems I was incorrect.
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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.
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Just to add further to your point, the man ate an apple would be el hombre comió una manzana.
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Is comer a regular verb then? so if I came across any other regulars I could use the same ending that comer has? i.e.: -o, -es, -e, etc?
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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)]
So what would be the difference between "the man eats" and "the man is eating"?
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The man eats: el hombre come
The man is eating: el hombre está comiendo
I thought that because this sentence has a male subject, you would use a masculine article
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The article must concordate with the noum that it is with it:
- El hombre
- La manzana
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English speakers understandably find the concept of masculine and feminine objects hard to comprehend. It is simply that English has evolved away from assigning genders to things, whilst other languages have not. There is no set explanation except "because it is!"
Is come present tense? How do you say "the girl ate a cake" in Spanish? La niña es come una pastel?
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Yes.
Besides proper ortography, sometimes accents differentiate words.
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Was told that "el" with accent for "The man" instead of indefinite "the", but here "The man" is using "el" without accent.
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"él" with accent is a pronoun; it means "he". "él" stands by itself as the subject of a sentence. Él come = He eats.
"el" without an accent means "the". "el" is followed by a noun. El perro come = The dog eats.
I don't notice any difference between the pronunciation of el (without accent) and él (with accent).
Why do they use "una" a feminine term in the sentence when there is a masculine noun "Hombre"?
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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.