Questions

Some basic questions Spanish speakers may ask can cause occasional problems in English because English only has one word, to be, where Spanish has two, ser and estar.

First, we know that “¿Cómo está él?” is “How is he?”, as we learned it in the first weeks of class.

But then we have the question “¿Cómo es él?” Our first reaction is to translate literally, but there we have a problem…

There are two types of questions, direct and indirect. We’re all familiar with the direct ones, as we use them every day: “How are you?”, “What would you like to do this weekend?” “Have you got any real beer in the house?” are some examples. They follow an “inverted” word order: unlike most sentences, the […]

There are two types of questions, direct and indirect. We’re all familiar with the direct ones, as we use them every day: “How are you?”, “What would you like to do this weekend?” “Have you got any real beer in the house?” are some examples. They follow an “inverted” word order: unlike most sentences, the subject comes after the auxiliary verb, not before.

We all know that “¿Cómo está él?” means “How is he?”. Here, we’re asking about his current state or emotion, if he’s well, sick, happy, sad, etc.

But the question “¿Cómo es él?” would also seem to be “How is he?”. Obviously, they both can’t be the same question, and they aren’t—we have two set questions to express those ideas:

How can you make requests and offers more polite in English? Have a look at the following expresions:
Would you mind (not)… ?
I wonder if (you) could…?
…