If you have spent any time studying Spanish, you’ve probably come across some form of the verb tener, ‘to have’. This lovely verb is one of the top five most frequently used verbs in the language, but you may not recognize its many other everyday uses. I started this post thinking of listing five examples, but within a few hours of posting I realized I had used at least four more during the first hours of my day!
In addition to expressing possession, phrases with tener que express something you have to do. These days you can look just about any verb up, but making sure the que is in there is important to show the shift in meaning for this expression. Make sure your second verb is in the infinitive. *Infinitive just means you don’t have to conjugate the second verb–it should always end in -ar, -er, or -ir.
In addition to being an expression with tener que + infinitive, in order to say
‘It has to do with’ the infinitive of ver–‘to see’ is used.
Again, the direct translation of this phrase is a bit strange, however, it is used very commonly in speech. If you want or do not want to do something, this might be your perfect phrase.
Éxito is success, so this is literally, ´to have success´. This may be used to describe a small accomplishment or something grande. Maybe you were able to get a lot done today. Where I live in Honduras some errands take a long time, and if you can accomplish more than 2 or 3 in a day, you have probably had success. If you have done well on an exam, you’ve also been successful. Here are a few examples:
Hunger, thirst, and sensations are often expressed with tener in Spanish. Rather than ‘I am hungry’ and ‘I am thirsty’ you ‘have’ hunger and thirst. This one is pretty straightforward, right?
Talking about the sensation of feeling hot or cold also requires tener. It should be noted that using estar to express this kind of sensation can have a sexual connotation and cause for some confusion, so just remember to use tener!
A typical idiom for expressing something you’re afraid of, tener miedo, ‘to have fear’ is used. Once again, tener is used to discuss feelings or sensations in Spanish!
This one is slightly tricky to translate. For beginners, its best just to think of it as holding a bit of a negative or difficult feeling. Pena refers to embarrassment, shyness, pity, or shame. Upon looking up various professional translations, I found quite a few meanings and have heard all of them used:
Literally translated this expression would be something like, ‘I have dream’. This 
isn’t really intuitive for a lot of English native speakers, but the phrase is extremely common and easy to use in place of Estoy cansado/a.
Tengo sueño y tengo que trabajar mañana./I am sleepy and I have to work tomorrow.
Ok! Go out, have fun, and use these expressions in your everyday life!
In order to say how old someone is, you would use the verb tener.
Just to reiterate, neither ser or estar can be used to talk about age.
Ser represents defining characteristics, and estar is used to talk about location and condition.
| singular | plural | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st persons | yo | tengo | nosotros nosotras | tenemos |
| 2nd persons | tú | tienes | vosotros vosotras | tenéis |
| usted | tiene | ustedes | tienen | |
| 3rd persons | él ella | tiene | ellos ellas | tienen |
