confused about usage of su

Question

De qué color es su cabello? can be translated to 'what color is his/her/your/its hair?' how do you know the difference?

ps I understand su is the usted form of 'your' and that it is singular and you use sue for pants or shoes. I'm just confused why/how it also means his and her and its and how you tell the difference.

Answer 1

If you need to clarify you add de + usted / ustedes / él / ella / ellos / ellas as needed. In a question like this you would know from context in real life whose hair you were asking about. So for this particular example you don't need clarification.

The "why" it means what it does is just because that is the way the language developed. It makes inclusive language easy in this case because there really is no single pronoun "his" or "her / hers" in Spanish.

I know it was a typo on your part, but just for the record the form to use before plural nouns is sus not sue.

I thought he meant "caballo" also, but the translater says "cabello" is a word for "hair". - - PeterRS, Feb 25, 2013

ok its just confusing, I'm using anki to drill sentences and it will say something like that and I will think "what color are your shoes" then flip it over and get it wrong... it was actually "what color are his shoes" in real life I guess I'll know! - hikerobby, Feb 25, 2013

and here's another question, I did mean "what color is he hair" would I use cabello or pelo? I don't mean horse - hikerobby, Feb 25, 2013

My bad! A horse is horse of course, but in Spanish I read it as caballo. I'll edit my answer. - Jubilado, Feb 26, 2013

Answer 2

Answer: context. If you are speaking, you might need to qualify your statement. It's like how in English "their" can be ambiguous. When I went to Peru, I would speak in usted a lot, and when beginning a sentence, I would have to use usted so they knew I was talking to them, if not, then they simply wouldn't know. Note the difference: ¿Le gusta la flor? (Do(es) you/he/she like the flower?) and ¿A usted le gusta la flor? Now it's clear. You can't know unless you have some context.