what is the difference in son and estás
What is the difference in son and estás when refering to how are you? Such as are you sad, son triste? or estás triste? Which one is right. Thanks for your help. Sincerely, Scott French
4 Answers
When I'm talking to my friend, and he appears sad to me, and if I said to him, "son triste?", he'd say to me, who are you and where is Chris??? "Son" is a word of quantity...Uno is one, Son is anything more than one, and generally reserved, in real life, for inanimate objects. Bueno, If I see Ito and his wife, and they appear to be sad to me, and I said "Son tristes", they would look at me and say "who are you and where is Chris???" The reality is I personally would not use that construction at all. It's obvious they are triste, so I would say "Porque estan tristes?" Esta and her friends are words of emotional station. Happy. Sad. Angry. So...Son is numerous and inanimate, Esta is one, Estan is two or more, living breathing things. 
That's the simple explaination.
A lot of words take on a different meaning according to wether they are used with ser or estar and triste may be one I don't know. estar listo= to be ready, ser listo = to be intelegent estar guapo/a= to be smartly dressed ser guapo/a = to be attractive estar aburrido/a = to be bored ser aburrido/a = to be boring charachter. there are many more.
¿Estás triste? Is the correct one.
“Son” comes from the verb “ser” and “estás” from the verb “estar”.
The difference in English is that both of these Spanish verbs are from the verb to be.
Scott,
Either one may be correct, depending on what "triste" refers to.
This is Spanish 101. Who don't you start in on the lessons here? Lessons
