Asking how are you?

Question

To ask how are you? Is there is a difference between cómo está? and cómo está usted? Or i can use anyone of them?

Hi yumna- welxome to the forum, but please use good grammar, including proper capitalization and punctuation. Since we are a language forum, that's really important. Thanks! (I fixed it for you) - Goyo, Aug 16, 2010

Answer 1

Hola yumna,

Bienvenida al foro!!!!

There are two ways to say 'You' - tu and usted. Usted is a more formal pronoun. It is used to show respect.

The verb conjugations are different for both the pronouns. It is not necessary to use the pronoun (tu/usted) all the time. Please refer to the link which lovely has provided.

está - is used with the Usted form and estás - with the tu form.

So the formal version of 'How are you?' is '¿Cómo está?' and the informal version is ¿Cómo estás?

Hope you find this useful

Answer 2

Hi yumma , there is no differences between them it's just that in Spanish you don't use the subject pronouns ( yo, tu , usted ....etc ) check this link for more about the subject pronouns :-When to use "subject pronoun" in Spanish: yo, tú, él, ella....?

Lovely it is true that as a rule you don't use the subject pronouns except for emphasis or to avoid ambiguity :) - FELIZ77, Aug 16, 2010

Answer 3

Truthfully, not only is the "usted" not needed, it makes you sound like a tourist.

The usted would be put in there for emphasis. How are you, maybe as opposed to how is someone else.

People who study a lot of Spanish will practically always insert the usted. People who speak alot of Spanish almost never will unless there is some good reason to include it.

And in the case of ¿Cómo está?- there really isn't a good reason to include it because the person who you are talking to knows full well you are talking to him.

Answer 4

You can use either one in a respectful way although adding the usted puts a little more emphasis on it. If you are asking in a less formal way you would say ¿Cómo estás?. If you were asking more than one person you could say ¿Cómo están? or ¿Cómo están ustedes?. If you were in Spain you might want to say ¿Cómo estáis? if you were around people you were comfortable with.

Answer 5

I know it's very informal but does anyone use ¿Qué tal? As a general rule of thumb here it is a friendly enquiry along the lines of "How's things?" or "How are you doing?" We use it if it is someone we see fairly regularly but ¿Cómo esta? is very formal and ¿Cómo estas? is for someone you know but haven't seen for a while. I guess the whole approach changes depending upon the part of the spanish-speaking world in which you live. We would only say 'usted' for clarity.