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- "Do you have a cat?"
"Do you have a cat?"
Translation:¿Tú tienes un gato?
147 Comments
166
They mean the same thing, but when u say tengo, youre talking about yourself. When you say tiene youre talking about someone else
"Tu" is a possessive adjective that means "your", while "tú" is a pronoun meaning "you".
For example: "Mi casa es tu casa." = "My house is your house." and, "Tú eres mi amigo." = "You are my friend."
You probably already know this, but just remember both are informal. This means they are used for friends, people you know, or people your own age. In other words, people with which you are on equal standing or familiar with.
548
We use "usted", which is more formal than "tú", we use it when we talk to people we don't know or older people than us.
You mean having 'Tú' in this particular sentence? No, it isn't necessary. 'Tú' is already implied by 'tienes'.
However, there is a chance the Duolingo team could have messed up and mark your answer wrong if you don't include it, so it is best just to humor the lessons and quizzes and put it in there.
1438
Tienes una gata (female cat) is accepted as an answer.
I assumed un gato would be the intended answer so to test Duo's acceptance of other correct answers I wrote una gata instead.
Without context though, I think gato is the better option as it is used to refer to the type of animal (eg, cats vs dogs, etc) regardless of gender. The question in English would usually be understood as referring to "any" cat, and not specifically to whether it's a male or female one.
ℒ
Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to not include the pronoun at the start of the sentence. However, remember that "¿Tiene un gato?" can also mean "Does he/she have a cat?", so you have to be careful with that. Also, keep in mind that while "tiene" does mean "you have", it is the usted form, meaning it is used in formal or unfamiliar situations, and can sound uptight if used with friends and family.
372
Don't add the question mark at the end either, and see if it works for you. It did for me.
Tienes -> is 2nd person... "you"(casual/informal) or "tú" as it would be in spanish.
Tiene -> is 3rd person... "he/she/it"..... BUT it's also 2nd person formal ("usted").
To an old person, or in a formal context, you would ask "¿Usted tiene un gato?". In a more casual context, you would ask "¿Tú tienes un gato?".
In third person, it would be like the 2nd person formal... if you wanted to ask, does he have a cat, you would ask "¿Él tiene un gato?".
Note that the pronouns can (and often are) dropped though.
Also, when to use the informal tú and the formal usted, depends on culture. For instance, in Spain it's not used that much among the younger generations. It's only used in very formal work situations, or when addressing senior citizens. In some places of Latin America it's used far more often.
So it can be a bit tricky, because "tiene" can be second or third person, depending on the context.
So, to answer your question: No, "tiene" and "tienes" are not the same, but can both indicate the 2nd singular present form of the verb "tener", just with different levels of formality.
548
You use "una" when the noun is feminine whereas you use "un" when the noun is masculine:
un gato > ["gato" is a masculine noun]
una casa > ["casa" is a feminine noun]
So if you learn a noun you have to learn its gender too.
By memorizing, pretty much. Many languages have different complex features that are challenging for learners from languages that don't have such features. It's like a speaker of a language without irregular verbs (like Chinese, for example) trying to learn English... it would be hard for him to understand that the past version of "I go" is "I went" instead of "I goed".
My advice would be to learn the noun with its gender. For example, instead of learning that "cat" is "gato" and "moon" is "luna", you learn that "the/a cat" is "el/un gato" and "the/a moon" is "la/una luna".
There are some little tricks, like words ending in "o" are usually masculine, and words ending in "a" are usually femenine, but this isn't a universal law and there are exceptions.
548
It is not correct in this sentence, "cat" can only be translated as "gato", the translation of "perro" is "dog".
This exercise accepts: "¿Usted tiene un gato?".
548
I know verb conjugation may seem tricky at first, but I have a little trick for you to remember easily!
Look at "Yo", it has an "o" then almost all of its verb conjugations will end in "o" too!:
Yo tengo
Yo escribo
To remember the conjugations with "tú" just remember that "tú" is second person in singular!
Tú tienes
Tú escribes
To remember the "él/ella" verb conjugations, just look at these pronouns, they have an "e" at the start, so most of their verb conjugation will end in "e"!:
Él tiene
Ella escribe
And to remember the "nosotros" verb conjugation just see that pronoun ends in "os" so their verb conjugation will end in "os" too!
Nosotros tenemos
Nosotros escribimos
So:
Yo tengo
Tú tienes
Él tiene
Nosotros tenemos
I know this won't be always useful but it's really useful to learn the verb conjugation.
1438
You can - I used gata just to 'test' Duo one week ago and it was accepted. Make sure you wrote una gata though, not un gata.
The default name for an animal species in Spanish generally takes the masculine form - so gato for cat as a type of animal.
Interestingly though, giraffe only has one form for both genders and it is feminine - jirafa. So the determiner is used to indicate gender: la jirafa y el jirafa » "the female giraffe and the male giraffe".
This is a ThoughtCo article on gender of animals:
https://www.thoughtco.com/gender-of-animals-3079265
ℒ
1438
On my Android phone if I hold my finger momentarily on any letter that can take an accent mark I get a pop-up from which I can then select the letter with its accent mark.
But also in Settings I have gone to Advanced Settings → Language and Input and added the Español (United States) keyboard.
I found this Google link with instructions for both Android and iPhone.
https://support.google.com/gboard/answer/7068494?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en
ℒ
358
They are both from of the verb tener = "to have".
tú tienes
él/ella/usted tiene
Reading through the rest of this discussion will be informative.
Here is an external resource:
https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/spanish-present-tense-forms
358
All Spanish nouns, including people, places, animals, things, ideas, and feelings, have grammatical gender (male or female).
There are a few general rules you can follow:
Masculine
As a general rule, nouns ending in -o, an accented vowel, -or, or -aje and nouns which refer to males.
Feminine
As a general rule, nouns ending in -a, -ción, -sión, -dad, -tad, and -umbre and nouns which refer to females.
Note that this says "as a general rule" - you will come across exceptions which you just have to learn
person | verb | translation |
---|---|---|
1st person | tengo | I have |
2nd person | tienes | you have |
3rd person | tiene | he/she/it has |
- ¿Yo tengo un gato? Do I have a cat?
- ¿Tú tienes un gato? Do you have a cat?
- ¿Él tiene un gato? Does he have a cat?
But when talking to someone formally, one uses the 3rd person instead of the 2nd.
- ¿Usted tiene un gato? Do you have a cat? [formal]
(note the pronouns are optional and typically used only for emphasis)
459
No, "vosotros" means "you" (familiar plural). "Ustedes" means "you" (plural). "Nosotros" means "we".
Martha is mostly right. I would also point out there is a distinction in Spanish from Spain, vosotros is the informal plural you and Ustedes is the formal plural you. Throughout most of Latin America, they've dropped the vostotros and just use Ustedes for both the formal and informal plural you. This is why there are so many Spanish courses (especially in the US) that don't use vosotros - it just isn't used much in this hemisphere.
There are little disagreements between Spanish from Spain and other Spanishes just like there are little distinctions between English from England and the other Englishes.
The position of words in a sentence is important. For example, here's one case in English.
"She only told me that she loved me." vs. "She told only me that she loved me." The meaning changes depending on where you put the word "only".
Duolingo is trying to show this by being a stickler for word order, as this can also apply to sentences in Spanish. Just wait until you get to direct and indirect object pronouns and you'll see what I mean.