The verbs llamarse, ser and tener: the beginning of the journey in the Spanish language
learn foreign languages: English, German and French. In other words, I understand what it feels like. And although French shares with Spanish the reflexivity of one of the first verbs one must learn, both in Spanish, llamarse, and in French, s'appeler, and the fact of expressing age using the verb tener, or avoir, that, personally, does not make things easier for me. Because regardless of the grammatical similarity, I still have to learn more things. I choose these particular examples because they are things my native language has in common with one I am learning. Because when things are different… Yes, I once said, in German, ich habe zu arbeiten, tengo que trabajar, my direct translation of I have to work. In this article we will look at the most basic ways in which these three verbs are used to achieve the first goal that anyone learning a language should set for themselves: being able to introduce themselves. Let's go!
The verb llamarse.
You can read more about this verb and do a short exercise here. From this article I just want you to take away this information: although in Spanish you can ask for someone’s name by saying ¿Cuál es tu nombre? (What is your name) and answer that question with Mi nombre es Federico (My name is Federico), the most common way to do this is by using the verb llamarse, a reflexive verb. That is, what you will hear in almost every situation when someone wants to know your name is ¿Cómo te llamas? Without the subject pronoun, because as we saw in this article this pronoun is normally omitted in Spanish, and in this case it is normal to omit it. And the most natural way to answer this question is Me llamo… followed by your name. Let’s look at its conjugation.
Yo me llamo.
Tú te llamas.
Él/Ella/Usted se llama.
Nosotros/as nos llamamos.
Vosotros/as os llamáis.
Ellos/Ellas/Ustedes se llaman.
In italics the reflexive pronouns, which cannot be omitted, unlike subject pronouns.
The verb ser.
The verb ser is a highly irregular verb in its conjugation, as are its equivalents in most Indo-European languages. Spanish also has the verb estar, which causes confusion for people learning the language. You can read more about these two verbs and their uses here, but what matters here is the use of the verb ser to introduce nationality and profession. The most natural way to ask about someone’s origin is ¿De dónde eres?, and to answer this question you have two options: soy plus a demonym (in my case, soy uruguayo) or soy de plus a country (in my case, soy de Uruguay).
To indicate profession or occupation, the verb ser is also normally used. Here the difference lies in how to ask someone what they do for work: this is normally done with the verb dedicarse, a reflexive verb just like llamarse, and one that also has a fixed preposition: dedicarse a. You can read more about reflexive verbs here. Normally, when someone wants to know what you do for a living they will ask ¿A qué te dedicas? And the most natural way to answer this question is soy profesor, médico, cajero en un supermercado, etc. Attention English speakers! No article. In Spanish you say soy profesor, not soy un profesor (I’m a teacher). Let’s look at the conjugation of the verb ser.
Yo soy.
Tú eres.
Él/Ella/Usted es.
Nosotros/as somos.
Vosotros/as sois.
Ellos/Ellas/Ustedes son.
The verb tener.
Just as in French, in Spanish we express age using the verb tener. That is, we say how many years we have. The most common way to ask someone their age is ¿Cuántos años tienes?, or ¿Qué edad tienes? and it is answered using the verb tener: tengo x años. You can read more about cardinal numbers, which are the ones used to express age, here, and here about more uses of the verb tener, although the one that concerns us today is this particular use: expressing age. Let’s look at its conjugation.
Yo tengo.
Tú tienes.
Él/Ella/Usted tiene.
Nosotros/as tenemos.
Vosotros/as tenéis.
Ellos/Ellas/Ustedes tienen.
¿Y tú quién eres?
As in many other languages, in Spanish, if someone asks you quién eres (who you are) they do not simply want to know your name. This question must be interpreted according to tone and context. It can be an aggressive question, meaning something along the lines of Who do you think you are? Or a question full of curiosity: whoever asks you that in a friendly tone wants to know much more about you than just your name, age, profession and origin. We have reached the end of this article. In the next one we will bring together the content of this and previous articles to reach our first communicative goal: personal introductions. Thank you for reading!
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