Beginners 33: Uses of tener

Spanish Obsessed Beginners episode 33. Uses of tener. Good morning everyone, and good morning to you Lis

Hi Rob, good morning, good morning world

And today is definitely Spring here in Spanish Obsessed towers. You might even be able to hear the first lawnmowers of the season outside, making it through to the podcast. So, we're feeling sunny, we've just been out for a sunny walk, which is an incredibly boring thing to say, but there's really nothing else going on a the moment.

Yes, it's very nice outside

It's very nice outside, it's sunny and the sky is blue. So in today's podcast we're going to be looking at a very useful verb, which is...

To have

I know we've been looking at quite a few verbs recently. But this is really useful because it's something which I keep saying, but one of the ways to sound less like a native English speaker, or one of the ways to sound less like translated Spanish is to relearn how to use some of these most common verbs in more natural ways. And these common verbs, just like in English, they have lots of different uses. Not all of which map that neatly to the basic English translation. So with tener, this is a very common verb in English and Spanish. And the usual meaning of course is "to have", as in possession. But when you pair it with other contexts in Spanish the translation could be "make", or "do", or something else entirely, and that's what we're going to look at today. Those uses of tener which aren't so obvious in English. So, we're going to assume that you already know the conjugations, we're not going to go through those now. We will put them in the notes, and don't forget that tener is a stem-changing verb, so that means the e becomes ie, él tiene, and it's also a -go verb. So, yo tengo. We'll also put a link to a Spanish from Scratch podcast which I think we did, which goes through all the conjugations in case you need those. So, on to the first use, this is like the most common use, and that's with possession. So, "I have a thing", "a thing belongs to me". So, how could you say "I have two cats"?

I have two cats