Meals can be verbs: 'desayunar', 'almorzar' and 'cenar'
In English, you have a meal: you have breakfast, have lunch, have dinner. Spanish usually skips that extra verb. It has everyday verbs that already mean the whole idea: desayunar (to have breakfast), almorzar (to have lunch) and cenar (to have dinner). You conjugate them like any other verb, and you are done.
English speakers often trip here because they translate word for word and produce phrases like tener desayuno or hacer la cena when they mean to say that they had a meal. There is a second surprise too. These verbs can take the food itself as a direct object, so desayuno fruta means I have fruit for breakfast. English needs a longer phrase to say the same thing.
Think of each meal verb as a single package that means eat this particular meal. There are two basic patterns:
- On its own, often with a time, place or company: cenamos a las ocho (we have dinner at eight).
- With the food as a direct object, with no preposition: cené una ensalada (I had a salad for dinner).
The second pattern is where English and Spanish really differ. English says I had eggs for breakfast, but Spanish simply puts the food right after the verb. Do not add para or de. Rule of thumb: whenever you want to say have [food] for [meal], use the meal verb followed by the food.
Desayunar is the morning meal. It is a regular -ar verb, so it is easy to use from day one.
Almorzar is the midday meal in most of Latin America. It changes its stem in the present (almuerzo, almuerzas, almuerza) and has a spelling change in the first person of the past: almorcé.
Cenar is the evening meal. It is regular, and it works well in questions about what someone ate.
There is a fourth verb of the same kind, merendar, which means to have an afternoon snack: merendamos pan con chocolate. It works exactly like the other three.
Spanish does not use tener desayuno or tener cena for having a meal. You may hear tomar el desayuno, but the simple verb is much more common in everyday speech.
Hago la cena means I make dinner, not I have dinner.
The nouns desayuno, almuerzo and cena mean breakfast, lunch and dinner. The same words are also verb forms: desayuno and almuerzo can mean I have breakfast and I have lunch, and cena can mean he or she has dinner. Context tells you which one it is. An article in front, as in el desayuno, marks the noun.
In much of Spain, the main midday meal is la comida, and people say comer for having lunch. There, almorzar often means having a mid-morning snack. In most of Latin America, almorzar is the normal verb for lunch.
Try saying what you ate today using only the meal verbs and the food, with no extra words: desayuné café, almorcé una sopa, cené pasta. If you catch yourself reaching for tener or para, drop them.
Spanish meal verbs already contain the idea of having: desayunar, almorzar and cenar mean to have breakfast, lunch and dinner. Use them on their own or put the food straight after them (cené una ensalada), and never add tener or para.