Questions for Essential Spanish 1
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Why is the translation of, How are you ? (informal), Como estas? and not Como estas tu?
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Hi dlevoy2,
Thanks for posting!
Spanish, differently from English, allows the omission of subjects. In other words, you don't always need to say the subject of the sentence. Because Spanish verbs (such as estás a form of estar to be) change form according to the subject of the sentence (i.e. yo estoy, tú estás, ella está...), the listener can usually tell what the subject is based on which verb form you use. So, you can say ¿Cómo estás? instead of ¿Cómo estás tú? because the verb tells you that the subject is tú. That said, you might here ¿Cómo estás tú? used in special contexts, namely, when you want to emphasize the tú, for example as you would in English when someone says "How are you?" and you reply, "I'm fine, but how are you?"
I hope this is helpful. Keep posting questions! Our eTutor will chime in as well on the next one.
Erin
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Makes sense. Thanks for your help Erin.-dlevoy2
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hey great help thanks!
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Hola dlevoy2,
no olvides colocar los acentos (cómo estás? cómo estás tú) aunque estés en el comienzo del aprendizaje es bueno que te vayas acostumbrando a ellos. En Español son muy importantes.
MarioS
