Answering "¿Comó estás?"
I do not understand why "estoy bien," which uses an adverb, is an appropriate response to the question "¿comó estás?" when most other responses, like "estoy triste" or "estoy feliz," use adjectives.
5 Answers
Do not we say "I am well" in English?
A fair point, if you haven't thought it through though, the whole confusion of adverbs vs adjectives.
In English, I'm well is not literally proper on the face of things either, but, as a well accepted shorthand for "I am doing well" is is perfectly acceptable and correct. It would seem to be the same, more or less, in Spanish.
Plus, you'll note in Spanish, a L-O-T of cases where they'll say bien when we might say good or OK. Different language and different practices.
"Estoy bien" means I am OK/good. What's wrong with that? By the way, most people simply say "Bien" and it works!
"Estoy bien" is the equivalent of "I'm good", but it's not a good explanation. bien=well, bueno=good
Because then people might come to the conclusion that "El juega bueno" is correct by reverse induction.
There's confusion because in some situations where we use an adjective (good) in English, they use an adverb (well) in Spanish. Although there's a lot of similarities between the two languages, there's no inter-lingual rule for when you use one or the other.
I mean, for example, if "adverb" means "after the verb", then logically when someone asks us "How are you" we should say "I'm well". But we don't (unless we are talking about health) and it's not bad grammar, like Hackerking says. You just have to learn the differences.
Because you normally use an adverb after a verb, but you can use an adjective after the verbs "ser" or "estar": está caliente, está frío... That is only because those verbs are special ones.
In other words, you can´t use adjectives instead of adverbs after most of the verbs, except "ser" or "estar" and a few others.
Besides "estar bien" doesn´t mean the same as "estar bueno/a".
"La vecina está bien"
doesn't means the same as
"La vecina está buena".
como estas in spanish means how are you. just anaswer directly how you would answer in english. just say bien, (translation) that means good. but, that is really borring and it does not tell a lot. but if your looking for just an easy way out, say that. but if you would like and conversation, say bien and then ask, y tu, (translation), meaning, and you. So your asking the other person how they are. i hope i was a help
