uses of que
hi,
when i looked dictionary que means that, but i saw que used as what and which, may i know why?
ex. que camiseta prefieres? (which t-shirt do you prefer?) what is this? (que es?) tengo que tomar un taxi (i have to take a taxi)
thanks............
3 Answers
HI Mike:
You're working backwards- taking all the possible English translations of a Spanish word and trying to make that fit your understanding of language (which is entirely based on English sentence construction). If you do that you will be very, very, very confused!
Que is a very useful word. We don't have an English word that exactly matches it, so, depending on how que is used, we may translate it many different ways in English.
Normally, it means "that". With the accent, qué normally means "what?"
"Tener qué" is a phrase- you have to learn phrases separately and do not try to translate them literally or make sense of them that way. "Tener que" means - "to have to".
Take your time and learn Spanish as Spanish. Remember it's not English- it's different. And you'll be fine.
May I know why?
Because in Spanish it is the same word, that is simply it.
Why do we use ser y estar for to be? Well....it is part of the language.
¡Hola!, Mike1976:
First, welcome to the forum here at SpanishDict. We love questions and enjoy helping others to learn Spanish or English on our language learning web site.
I think the problem with your question is that the answer is H U G Estyle = "font-size:160%;"> . "Que" is one of the high frequency of use words in Spanish.
We could help you better if your question was smaller in the sense of being better focused on a specific problem with the use of the word "que". I'd like to ask you to have a look at our dictionary definition of the word where you will find that it can mean, among other things, who, what, which, that, than and more depending on context. Here is the dictionary definition ----> Que . Read it over carefully and you will agree that it is the multiple uses of the word that drove you to ask your question in the first place.
Another action you can take is to do a search on the internet for, say, "Use of que" where you will find reference pages like this one at Spanish.about.com ----> Using "que" & etc .
When you have had a chance to digest this pretty big body of information, try to come back to the forum, here, with one or more targeted and specific questions. We're here to help, but you have asked a very big question.
Muchos saludos/Best regards,
Moe
