How do you say "This is..."?
It may sounds like a strange question but is it okay to say something like:
Esta es una manzana. or Este es aburrido.?
Just want to ask this question because I am not sure if you say like that in spanish...thanks!
4 Answers
"Esta es una manzana." is correct.
but "Este es aburrido." is not , it needs to be ; "Esto es aburrido."
On the other hand, "This is Monday." would usually be said as "Hoy es lunes." Do not assume that you can blindly substitute "esto es" (or any other single phrase for each and every occurrence of "this is" that you come across in English. Languages are not that consistent/predictable.
Focus on finding equivalent ways of expressing ideas (complete thoughts) rather than snippets of sentences with the intention of "stitching" them together to form sentences.
There's a little more to it. I can't think of any other situation in which I'd say "Esta es una manzana" except if I was showing one to someone who had never seen one, or I was showing a bizarre apple that doesn't even resemble one. In any of those cases you have to identify the "unknown object" with "esto" as well, since you can't speak about its gender yet. i.e: "esto es una manzana". The second sentence would also be like that, simply because when you assign a pronoun to describe an activity that you are doing or a situation that comes up you always use the neutral form: "Esto es aburrido", "Esto me agrada", "Con esto no contaba", etc..
Esto es...
