Imagine you go one day to Spain in your holidays and you eat too much paella and drink too much sangría… or you go to Mexico and eat too many tacos… :/ and then, all of a sudden, a terrible stomach pain appears. You need to go to a nearby drugstore or hospital in order to get some pills and feel better, but before getting the pills you need to explain to the pharmacist or doctor what hurts you. Then, you remember that lesson in that random but awesome website that explained how to say “it hurts” in Spanish and how to talk about pain and sickness in this language. And thanks to that lesson, you manage to get the proper medication and continue happy and healthy with your vacation days 🙂
Well, with this situation what I was trying to say is that all this stuff and vocabulary may be very useful for you one day, so please, take note!
The basic structure to say what hurts you in Spanish it is built with the verb doler, and it is the following:
me duele(n) + definite article + body part.
For example, if you have a headache, you would say: me duele la cabeza.
And if your eyes hurt, you would say: me duelen los ojos.
But, how we do know if we have to use duele or duelen? Well, think about the body part that hurts you. Is it a single part, like the head? Or it is more than one part, like the eyes, the teeth or the legs?
If it is a single part, use the verb form duele, because this is the 3rd singular person of the verb doler. And if two or more body parts hurt you, use the form duelen, which is the 3rd plural person of that verb.