tomar
“tomar” — to take, to have (food and drink) in Spanish. Verb, level A0. Wider than English 'take': you tomar coffee and drinks — tomo café — and you tomar the metro as well. ¿Qué tomas? — what will you have? In a live sentence: “Tomo café por la mañana” — I have coffee in the morning. You can hear how it sounds right here. A word from the everyday Spanish course, level A0.
In short
| Written in Spanish | tomar |
| Translation | to take, to have (food and drink) |
| Part of speech | verb |
| Level | A0 |
- tomarto take, to have (food and drink)
Why it looks that way
Wider than English 'take': you tomar coffee and drinks — tomo café — and you tomar the metro as well. ¿Qué tomas? — what will you have?
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- Tomo café por la mañanaI have coffee in the morning
- Vamos a tomar el metroWe will take the metro
- ¿Qué tomas?What will you have?
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “to take, to have (food and drink)” in Spanish?
«tomar». In a live sentence: “Tomo café por la mañana” — I have coffee in the morning. You can hear how it sounds right on this page. Verb, level A0.
Why does this word look the way it does?
Wider than English 'take': you tomar coffee and drinks — tomo café — and you tomar the metro as well. ¿Qué tomas? — what will you have? A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
Can I hear how it sounds?
Yes, right on this page: click the word and it will play. The sound works on any phone, and nothing needs to be installed.