- Forum >
- Topic: Spanish >
- "Do you have a cat?"
"Do you have a cat?"
Translation:¿Tú tienes un gato?
147 Comments
Tengo is used for words like "I" but tiene is used for words like "he" "she" "it".
166
They mean the same thing, but when u say tengo, youre talking about yourself. When you say tiene youre talking about someone else
Can someone explain the difference be "Tu" and "Tú" I've seen both used throughout lessons and besides there being an accent on one and not on the other!
"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.
tienes = informal...........................eg: tú tienes. tiene= formal.................................eg: usted tiene
- 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.
If they accept "¿Tienes hermano?" for "Do you have a brother?", they should accept "¿Tienes gato?" for "Do you have at cat?". Reported.
"tienes" is only for "tú" (informal); tiene is used with "usted", "él" and "ella"
When you use tienes it indicates tú, If you use tiene, it will refer to usted (which is formal version of 'you')
Be careful with the translation guides. Although the words can mean the same, I think I need to be mindful of the intention.
I'm not sure why you commented that on this question in particular, but yes, very much so. Connotation and situational use are important in all languages.
You should be able to, since that is the correct form in castillano, report it.
In English would be "Do have a cat you?" So it is weird to say it in that way.
Actually, some formal Spanish dialects do form questions that way. It should be accepted as an optional answer.
Maybe you're thinking of "haber", which can mean "have" but only in the sense of a helper verb. For "to have" in the sense of possessing something, it's "tener".
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.
It also does help remember that tú matches with tienes, but I agree that Doulingo shouldn't mark it wrong. :)
Correct, but just to add to this... "tiene" is also "you have", if it's formal (usted tiene), which is why in this sentence it's specified that it's "TU tienes gato".
Not sure why the hint for this says to use 'verdad', then verdad is wrong.
- 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
Both terms refer to house cats, though they are not the same. "Minimo" literally means "minimum", but when referring to cats it more accurately translates to "❤❤❤❤❤-cat". It is a very informal word used in colloquial speech.
"Usted" is the formal, singular form of "you". It is used when addressing someone you wish to speak respectfully to, such as a superior, someone older than yourself, someone you do not know, or someone you wish to show a lot of respect for.
Duolingo gave me credit, but is it legit to say:
Tiene un gato?
Just checking for real life application. I plan on using this a lot.
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.
"tienes un gato?" marked wrong cause I didn't put "tú?"
Karel the Robot called. He wants his 10th-grade Computer Science class back.
I am unable to add the Spanish question mark before sentence which makes sentence wrong and ca not move forward on this.
- 372
Don't add the question mark at the end either, and see if it works for you. It did for me.
How do you differentiate a ques and a statement in a spanish as here it can also be read as 'you have a cat'???
One has a question mark and the other does not. "Do you have a cat?" is a question and therefore has a question mark. "You have a cat," is a statement, and therefore has a period.
"tienes" is the you (informal) conjugation. The conjugation for "usted" is "tiene", as it is the he/she/you (formal) conjugation.
I used the usted form instead of the tu form. Your program said it was incorrect. I confirmed my sentence correct through another app. ??????
The verb conjugation.
"Tiene" is "he/she has" and "you (formal) have".
"Tienes" is "you have".
I think Duo is trying to ease people in to Spanish first before dropping the knowledge bomb that you don't need the indefinite article if the number is obvious, but yes, it is misleading for it to not be accepted at all.
No. That would be, "Your I have a cat."
You must add the accent over the 'u' in 'tú' and you must use the correct conjugation. There are very few exceptions.
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.
Should it not be "Haces tu tienes un gato?" or is the "Do"silent and not used? I am confused as I got this question wrong.
The do is not used. As far as I know, that grammatical feature of using "do" is almost exclusive to English, and not even used in related Germanic languages. I believe I heard it's an intrusion from the grammar of some Celtic languages, but I'm not sure.
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?".
What is the difference between, "tiene and tienes" , how and when to use them. Also "quieres and quiere". Its so frustating how and when to use them.
- 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.
Yes exactly the same. Most people leave the 'tu' out in everyday speech unless they are emphasizing it.
"¿¡ Yo tengo unos problemas?! No, tu tienes unos problemos."
Tú is a pronoun that means "you". Tú ama comida means "You love food"
Tu is a possessive adjective that means "your". Tu libro means Your book
Tú and tu are pronounced exactly the same - the accent mark is just used when written to indicate which word you mean to help the reader.
The comments have been helpful to understand the difference between tu and tú and usted. Thank you.
- 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
Without seeing what you actually wrote, we have no idea whether that's true or not.
- 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
If you are going from Spanish to English, 'una gata' is also accepted. But in general, if you are asking if someone has a cat (regardless of gender), you use 'gato' - masculine is the default. Only if you are specifically asking if they have a female cat would you use 'una gata'
So "tu tienes un gato" means Do you have a cat, and also means You have a cat ?
Tu tienes un gato. means You have a cat.
¿Tu tienes un gato? means Do you have a cat?
The difference between a statement and a yes/no question in Spanish is just inflection of voice.
- 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
My tablet does not have the needed accents to complete my spanish sentences. How to I find them? Example tu, I only can do tu'
How to get to know that any thing in spanish is masculine or feminine?
- 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
So an upside down question mark goes before a question along with a regular question mark at the end of the sentence. Very interesting!
Yep. Same goes with the exclamation mark:
¡Come tus frijoles! Eat your beans!
It's worth noting that the initial punctuation doesn't always come at the start of the entire sentence, but instead at the start of the question or exclamation clause.
e.g.
Señorita, ¿está bien? Miss, are you well?
What is the difference in Tiene and Tienes? I understand tengo and tiene but not tiene and tienes
| 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)
Why was it correct to say ?Tienes una bicicleta? But when it asked to write, Do you have a cat? It was correct to say, ?Tu tienes un gato? Why was one without "tu" and the other required "tu"? Thanks
The Tú is optional in both cases as it's implied by tienes.
If you were marked wrong, you probably had a typo or some other mistake.
¿Vosotros tenéis - Do you have....
Vosotros is the Spanish version of ustedes.
- 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.
It seems Duo introduces one more type of conjugation (Vos tenés) to higher skill level users. Not vosotros, vos (2nd person singular). It is not standard usage, and not taught so much on Duo, just very occasionally.
Was it a "Type what you hear" and you only heard "¿Tú tienes un" with the gato left out?
The audio getting clipped used to happen to me when I was using the Safari web browser to access Duolingo via webpage. At some point it got better and I'm not sure why. FWIW I'm using Chrome now on my computer.
@iamhimjhaa is my id please message me on Instagram we'll discuss there Spanish and we can chat and we can make group on Instagram and we all can chat there... What you all say guys?
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.
