Me duele, Te duele: Expressing pain

Introduction

When you're in pain, in can be helpful if you can express what part of your body is hurting. In this set of exercises, you'll get practice with vocabulary for common body parts associated with pain and with conjugating the verb doler (to hurt). This is great practice for situations in which you'd like to state where you are or someone else is experiencing pain.

Note: While being able to express where you're hurting is a good starting place, you should communicate through a professional interpreter to ensure that both you and your doctor have complete information for making accurate diagnoses and not jeopardizing your recovery when seeking medical treatment ― even if you feel that your Spanish language capabilities are more advanced.

Instructions

This set of exercises allows you to practice some body parts and the conjugations of doler in three different modes.

  • In Practice Vocab mode, when you click on different areas for body parts in the image, you'll be provided with the correct conjugation of doler for saying "My [blank] hurts..." You'll need to fill in the sentence with the correct vocabulary word.
  • Select Practice Verb mode to be provided with the correct vocabulary word and to fill in the first part of the sentence with the correct conjugation. Here, you'll use the tú form, i.e. "Your [blank] hurts."
  • When you pick Practice Both, you'll need to construct the full sentence for talking about what hurts him (él), her (ella), them singular (elle), or the formal you (usted).

Remember:

  • Doler is a verb like gustar. Rather than following a typical sentence formation of Subject + Verb + Object, the direction of conjugation is reversed, with the body part (the grammatical subject) coming after the conjugated verb. This construction reflects how Spanish conceptualizes pain differently than English, treating the body part as the actor (doing the hurting) and the person as the indirect oject receiving the pain. "Me duele la cabeza" literally means "My head is hurting me."
  • Since doler is conjugated according to the body part that hurts, just two conjugations will be used: the third person singular or plural conjugations of duele and duelen. Use "duele" when the body part is singular, and "duelen" when it's plural.
  • The person experiencing the pain can be expressed using these indirect object pronouns, depending on whose pain you're describing: me for my pain, te for your (informal) pain, and le for his, her, their (singular) or your (formal) pain. To distinguish the indirect object when le is used, you can use emphasis phrases before the indirect object pronoun, like a usted, a él, a ella, or a elle.
  • When stating which body part hurts, use the corresponding definite article that goes before the body part (la cabeza; los pies) rather than possessive pronouns like mi, tu or su. Just like the construction "The head hurts" rather than "My head hurts" sounds odd in English, saying "Me duele mi cabeza" rather than "Me duele la cabeza" sounds odd in Spanish.

For example:

  • Me duele la cabeza. Te duele la cabeza.
  • A usted le duelen los pies. A él le duelen los pies. A ella le duelen los pies. A elle le duelen los pies.

Practice Modes

¿Qué te duele?

Select a practice mode, then click on a body part to begin.

The answer will appear here after you click Show Answer.