1.9 - Asking People How They Are Doing

In this section, we’re going to learn how to say “How are you?” in different circumstances.

Now, this might sound simple — but in Spanish, we have both formal and informal, and to add a spin in there, it’s even more complicated when talking to a group of people.

Asking “How are you guys?” or “How are you girls?” has it’s own way of being said in Spanish.

If you’re going to ask one person how they are doing, you’d say “¿Como esta?”

That’s formal, but you could make it more formal by saying “¿Como esta Usted?

You don’t have to add the pronoun, but you can. In an informal setting among friends, you would say “¿Como estas?”

If we’re talking plural, whether three people or a million people, you would say “¿Como estan?”

With the pronoun, that would be, “¿Como estan Ustedes?”

Notice that we don’t actually have gender differences here, which makes it a little easier. We don’t have to worry about Mr. and Mrs. when we’re asking this.

In this section we practice saying “How are you?” in the formal singular ‘usted’ or informal ‘tú’ form as well as the plural ‘ustedes’ form. Note that in most of Latin America there is no different formal and informal for the plural.

In Spain however they use the pronoun ‘vosotros’. We will not be using that here, but just so you know it exists.

Example: Informal – Mr. Smith -> ¿Cómo estás?
Formal – Mrs. Jones -> ¿Cómo está usted?
Informal – Mr. and Mrs. González -> ¿Cómo están ustedes?

Remember, ‘ustedes’ is used both for formal and informal plural in Latin American Spanish.

Let’s get started!

¡Empecemos!

ENGLISH	SPANISH
Formal – Mrs. Ramírez	¿Cómo está usted?
Informal – Mr. Smith	¿Cómo estás?
Formal – Mr. and Mrs. Jones	¿Cómo están ustedes?
Informal – Mr. and Mrs. Ramírez	¿Cómo están ustedes?
Formal – Mr. Jacobs	¿Cómo está usted?
Informal – Ms. Landon	¿Cómo estás?