¿Cómo estás?
Thursday January 15, 2004
One of the first things you probably learned in Spanish is how to ask and answer an everyday question such as "¿Cómo estás?" ("How are you?"). Do you ever get tired of the stock answer, "bien"? If so, check out our forum, where participants recently offered some popular (and, in some cases, unconventional) alternatives. Join the discussion...
Comments
It’s comó estás.. stress the other “o”
To Chris,
You’re mistaken. It’s not the second O that is stressed. The first O is stressed, and the reason it has an accent mark is to distinguish it from “como” without an accent mark, which means, “like” or “as”.
Other words like this in Spanish:
Que vs. qué (that or which vs. what)Quiero que me llames Nathan, BUT Qué quieres hacer esta noche?
Cual vs. cuál (declaratory which vs. interrogative which) Su estilo es muy eccentrico, lo cual me gusta mucho. BUT Cuál es la diferencia?
Más vs. mas (more vs. but, although mas used as “but” is very literary, in Italian the word is “mai”)
Accent marks in these cases do not change the pronunciation of the word, but they signify a different meaning.
Yeah Nathan’s right. Also, his last point is a nice one. Usually – although there are of course exceptions – it’s the vowel in the penultimate syllable is stressed. So in the case of ‘como’ the penultimate syllable is ‘co’ and so the first ‘o’ in ‘como’ is always stressed. Adding the accent doesn’t change the pronunciation, it just tells the reader that it’s a question word.
This stress convention explains why we have an accent in ‘dámelo’ (give it me). The convention would make us stress the vowel in the penultimate syllable, i.e. the ‘e’ in ‘me’. But this takes the stress away from the verb, in this case the verb is ‘dar’. So we add an accent to tell the reader, and for that matter the speaker, to stress the ‘a’ in ‘da’ and as such keep the stress on the verb.
Estupendo Grathias
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS LITTLE CLEAR UP. I AM A DOUBLE MINOR IN SPANISH AND ASIAN STUDIES, AND THIS LITTLE TIP HELPED ME OUT A WHOLE LOT!!
GRACIAS
if you have time during the day practice saying your vowels A E I O U
as they sound in spanish or ask a spanish speaker help you as you say them. believe me this is a big secret being able to say those vowels as a native speaker change drastically the way you sound in spanish.. many times spanish speakers want to make fun of english speakers who want to say something in spanish by exagerating the vowel sounds from english into spanish words.. this is where there is a big separation from english to spanish. i met once a japanese student who thought phrases in spanish sounded a lot easier than english words, and that has to do with other people who have languages that deal with syllables.
¿Por què no te callas, Nathan?