Me duele los ojos al leer.

Question

The translation that I have is "It hurts my eyes to read"

For some reason this doesn't seem correct.

To me this translates to english literaly for me as " I gives pain to my eyes to the read."

Can someone explain why it is .."al leer" ?

THanks so much

Reading hurts my eyes. - lagartijaverde, NOV 10, 2010

Answer 1

"Al" can be used in front of the infinitive forms of verbs. It means something like "upon" or "at the time of". So the above sentence means "My eyes hurt upon reading".

Here's another example: Al amanecer se levantaron. "At sunrise they got up".

Answer 2

Ejemplos -Al morirse, Jaime dejó su cuantiosa herencia al criado (al morirse=cuando se murió)(al criado=a su criado). -Cuando se cayó, se hizo mucho daño y al intentar levantarse ,se dio cuenta de que no podía.(al intentar levantarse=cuando intentaba levantase=mientras intentaba levantarse) El socorrista nadó en dirección al peligroso acantilado que está al norte de Santander(en dirección al peligroso acantilado=hacia el peligroso acantilado)(que está al norte=situado más al norte que Santander) Al enterarse de que iba a nevar ,se puso el abrigo antes de salir al exterior (de salir al exterior=de salir fuera)

Answer 3

One last thing: it should be "dueleN", because there are two eyes.

Me duele un brazo.
Me duelen los brazos.

Answer 4

It hurts my eyes to read is correct. The verb duele means "It hurts", and the pronoun me tells us who or what IT hurts. In this case, "my eyes". Another way of expressing this idea is "Reading hurts my eyes."

Answer 5

Actually duele is correct, the verb duele is referring to "it". As in "it" hurts my eyes. Duelen in this sentence would change the meaning to, they hurt my eyes.

You shouldn't be giving advice in language you don't speak well, my friend, because the verb is referring to "them", the eyes. Do you say "My eyes hurts" in English? No? Well... neither do we in Spanish. We say "My eyes hurt" (Me duelen los ojos), where the verb is in plural to agree with the subject, which is in plural.

Whether you are likely to hear this from any native speaker, I won't argue against, but the natives I have spoken to wouldn't make say "duele" with "los ojos", and in proper Spanish it would be dismissed as an unacceptable mistake, whether you like it or not. I bet people prefer to learn "the correct version".

Answer 6

Actually duele is correct, the verb duele is referring to "it". As in "it" hurts my eyes. Duelen in this sentence would change the meaning to, they hurt my eyes.

What are you talking about? - lazarus1907, DIC 7, 2010