Llevar vs traer: the one question, the chart, the quiz

Llevar or traer: the one question

Ask where the thing — or the person — ends up. If it ends up where the speaker is, the verb is traer, which the academies define as moving something to the place where the speaker is: tráeme un vaso de agua, ¿me traes la cuenta?, trae a tu hermana el sábado. If it ends up anywhere else — with another person, in another place — the verb is llevar: te llevo al aeropuerto, llevo a los niños al colegio, ¿qué llevamos a la fiesta? The question is never about the speaker's hands; it is about where the movement ends.

Ir and venir are the same pair without the thing carried. Venir is moving toward the place where the speaker is — ven aquí, ¿vienes a mi casa? — and ir is moving anywhere else: voy al trabajo, vamos al cine. Put the two pairs side by side and one line covers all four: toward me, traer and venir; anywhere else, llevar and ir.

Every use, in one chart

Two rows in the chart below deserve a second look. I'm coming is ¡voy! — the person who calls you to the table is the one who stays, so you go to them; the same logic gives ¿puedo ir contigo? for can I come with you. And the second-last row is llevar's other job, time: llevar says how long someone has been somewhere or doing something — llevo tres años aquí, lleva dos semanas sin aparecer, lleva tres días lloviendo — a use the academies' Diccionario panhispánico de dudas records as standard, with the gerund for an action that continues and sin and an infinitive for one that has not happened.

Where the speaker stands: the four verbs in one chart

The chart below is the whole rule. Spanish measures every one of these verbs from where the speaker is, not from the listener — and that single difference explains the slips English speakers make, because English measures bring and come from the listener's side as often as the speaker's. I'll bring it to your place is te lo llevo, not te lo traigo; I'm coming to pick you up is voy a recogerte, not vengo a recogerte. The academies' dictionary of doubts marks that last sentence — quédate en tu casa, que yo, en cuanto pueda, vengo a recogerte — as venir used for ir, a habit it traces to Catalan and Italian speakers; English speakers arrive at it from I'm coming.

One case goes the other way. Venir also means going somewhere together with the speaker: ¿vienes al cine? is come to the cinema with me, said by the person who is going. So the one who invites says vienes, and the one who asks to join says ¿puedo ir contigo? — each from their own side.

Traer, ir and venir are irregular: traigo, voy, vengo

Three of the four verbs are irregular; the chart below has traer and venir. Traer has the g of traigo in the whole present subjunctive (traiga, traigas) and a j in its preterite — traje, trajo, trajeron — which the academies' examples keep in the past subjunctive too: trajera, trajese, never trajiera. Venir shortens to vine, vino in the preterite, and its command is ven (tú), not viene — the dictionary of doubts says so in as many words. Ir is a verb of its own: voy, vas, va; fui, fue (no accent, the academies note, because they are one syllable); the gerund is yendo; the commands are ve (tú) and id (vosotros), and vete, go away.

Three phrases: ya voy, llevo tres años, lo que trae

Ya voy is the answer when someone calls you — I'm coming — and ahora voy, I'll be right there; both are ir because you go to them. Llevar with a stretch of time says how long: llevo tres años en Madrid, llevamos una hora esperando, lleva dos días sin dormir. And ¿qué te trae por aquí? asks what brings you here, said by the person who is here. Two things to leave out: venir de and an infinitive is movement only — vengo de comer, I'm back from lunch — and the French-style use for I have just, as in viene de ganar el premio, is one the academies censure; the everyday verb for that is acabar de.

Why do English speakers mix them up?

Because English does not always ask where the speaker is. I'm coming, I'll bring it over, can I come with you — in each one English takes the listener's side, and the Spanish speaker stays on their own: voy, te lo llevo, ¿puedo ir contigo? So the English speaker's slips run one way: venir and traer where Spanish needs ir and llevar — vengo a tu casa, te traigo el libro mañana said from home. The reverse slip is rare. The quiz on this page is built from those sentences, plus the time use of llevar and the command ven.

There is no first-party error rate on this page yet: our mistake tagger counts ser vs estar, por vs para, the tenses and the object pronouns, not these verbs. When it does, the number will sit here, the way it does on the sibling pages. Until then the quiz is the measure.

What comes after llevar and traer?

Hay vs está is the other pair decided by what the sentence points at — a thing's existence or its place — and the ser vs estar quiz is where estar's job begins. Pedir vs preguntar and saber vs conocer are the other everyday verbs English says with one word and Spanish with two, and the reason llevar takes a after a person — llevo a los niños — is the personal a, the same a in por vs para's neighbour. The free Spanish level test places you on the A1–C2 scale in five minutes; A2 vs B1 Spanish says what changes after the first levels, and how to go from A2 to B1 is the plan.