Me lavo las manos: articles, not possessives, for body and clothes

Explicación

With body parts and clothing, Spanish marks the owner on the verb (a reflexive or indirect-object pronoun) and uses the plain definite article on the noun — not a possessive. So me lavo las manos ('I wash my hands'), not *lavo mis manos; se puso el abrigo, quítate los zapatos.

The pronoun already says whose it is, so the possessive would be redundant: me rompí el brazo ('I broke my arm'), le cortaron el pelo, me duele la cabeza. Using mis/tus there is grammatical but immediately sounds translated.

The verb doler works the same way, with an indirect-object pronoun + article: me duelen los pies, ¿te duele la garganta? The article, not a possessive, carries the 'my/your'.

Ejemplos

Reglas relacionadas

• Reflexive pronouns: me, te, se, nos, os, se
• When Spanish uses el/la and English doesn't