53: How to express obligation in Spanish

LearnCraft Spanish

Timothy Moser

Education, Language Learning

4.9 • 634 Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2026

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

How do you use Tener and Haber to talk about obligations, such as "I had to do that" and "someone needs to do it"? Let's explore the Tener + que and Haber + que constructions that Spanish uses to express obligation.

Practice all of today's Spanish for free at LCSPodcast.com/53

Transcript

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0:00.0	Here, you have to have these.
0:05.7	Join us on a rigorous step-by-step journey to fluency.
0:10.7	I'm Timothy, and this is LearnCraft Spanish.
0:15.7	In the last few weeks, we've learned a couple different ways that have can be translated from English into Spanish.
0:22.5	We use Aber to put other verbs in the past, and we use Tener to talk about possession.
0:30.9	As some quick examples, see if you can predict whether the following sentence would be Tener or Abert.
0:38.3	I have the things.
0:41.7	This would be
0:42.9	Tener because have here
0:45.6	refers to possession.
0:50.7	Tenggo las
0:51.2	Cosa.
0:54.5	Now how about this one?
0:56.9	I have been here.
1:00.5	In this case, I'm not saying I have anything.
1:03.9	We're using have to put something in the past.
1:07.8	So here we're using A-Ber.
1:12.6	I've been here. the past. So here we're using, A-Ber. Now what about this sentence?
1:18.4	I have to do something.
1:22.6	Hmm. We don't seem to be talking about possession,
1:26.8	and we're definitely not putting something in the past.
1:30.8	What does have mean here, and how would we put this in Spanish?
	...

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