¿Cómo se dice "How is your mum today?"

Question

Hi,which verb would i use to ask how somebody is.How is your mum today?,is it cómo está su madre hoy ?or cómo es su madre hoy?.I have tried the translation page but both are used.

Just a side poiny Gez, I think your question should either be 'cómo se dice' - how does one say or 'cómo te dices' - how do you say :) - Kiwi-Girl, Jul 28, 2010

Answer 1

¿Cómo está su madre? - How is your mother feeling today?

¿Cómo es su madre? - What is your mother like?

Answer 2

Hopefully Name Taken's examples have given you an idea but for a little more information. Both of your sentences are correct - the choice is using either:

está - which is a part of the verb estar

or es - which is part of the verb ser

• both here meaning 'is'

I'm not sure how much you have learnt about these two verbs yet but for beginners this is probably the first hurdle you will come across when learning Spanish.

In English 'is' is used to described anything whereas you could say that Spanish has one 'is' - está for things which are not permanent (feelings etc which can change given time) and another is 'es' for things which are more permanent (like personality, eye colour etc).

That of course is over simplifying things and you will learn much more about the use of these two verbs but hopefully it gives you somewhere to start