Introducing People and Pets

Quick Answer

¡Hola!Learn how to introduce yourself, other people, and your pets in this fun skill!

Vocabulary

Let's start off with the vocab words in this skill!

Words

Spanish	English
un	a
una	a
perro	dog
gato	cat
hombre	man
mujer	woman
él	he
ella	she
yo	I
tú	you
soy	(I) am
eres	(you) are
es	(he/she) is
hola	hello
adiós	goodbye

All Spanish nouns (sustantivos), including people, places, animals, things, ideas, and feelings, have a gender (i.e. they're male or female). For example, un gato is used to talk about a male cat, while una gata is used to talk about a female cat.

Phrases Galore

Here are some the fantastic phrases used in this skill!

Spanish	English
Él es un perro.	He's a dog.
Él es un gato.	He's a cat.
Yo soy Daniel.	I'm Daniel.
Yo soy Alex.	I'm Alex.
Yo soy un hombre.	I'm a man.
Yo soy una mujer.	I'm a woman.
Tú eres un hombre.	You're a man.
Tú eres una mujer.	You're a woman.
Tú eres Daniel.	You're Daniel.
Él es Mario.	He's Mario.
Ella es Sandra.	She's Sandra.
Él es un hombre.	He's a man.
Ella es una mujer.	She's a woman.

In Spanish, questions and exclamations use both closing and opening punctuation. For example:

examples
¡Hola! Hello!
¡Adiós! Goodbye!

Grammar

Ready to review the grammar introduced in this skill? Let's get to it!

Subject Pronouns

Subject pronouns are pronouns that identify who or what is performing the action of a verb.

Let's take a look at the Spanish subject pronouns introduced in this skill.

Spanish	English
yo	I
tú	you
él	he
ella	she

• It isn't necessary to capitalize yo in Spanish unless it is the first word in a sentence.

• Tú is written with a tilde (a written accent) over the u.

Verbs

In this skill, you learned how to use the verb ser(to be) to introduce people and pets. Let's review the conjugations you learned!

Ser

Spanish	English
(yo) soy	I am/I'm
(tú) eres	you are/you're
(él) es	he is/he's
(ella) es	she is/she's

While subject pronouns can be used to replace a person's name, many native speakers of Spanish rarely use them at all. This is because Spanish verb endings tell you who the subject is. Take a look at the following examples:

examples
Yo soy Raquel. I'm Raquel.
Soy Raquel. I'm Raquel.

The first example includes the subject pronoun yo (I), while the second example omits it...but both are equally valid ways to say I'm Raquel in Spanish!

Articles

Artículos(articles) are small functional words that go before a noun to tell us if the noun we are referring to is general or specific. In this skill, you learned two indefinite articles that translate as a or an. Let's take a look!

Spanish	English
un	a
una	a

An indefinite article always has to match the gender of its noun.

• If a noun is feminine, like mujer, then the article also has to be feminine (una mujer).

• If that same noun is masculine, like hombre, the article is also masculine (un hombre).

Pronunciation

Before we end our review, let's talk a bit about the letter hin Spanish. Listen to the pronunciation of the world hola.

examples
¡Hola! Hello!

Did you notice that the h in hola is silent? Good! The letter h is almost always silent in Spanish. It's only not silent in words adopted from other languages, like Hawái(Hawaii), or when it comes after the letter c, like in chipotle(chipotle) .

For now, just remember not to pronounce the h in hola!

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• Fundamental Spanish Phrases to Learn Right Away

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