Hey! How are you?It's one of the things we say most often, right?And it's no different in Spanish. Asking someone "how are you?" is one of the key things you'll need to know for pretty much all kinds of conversations.So, like asking someone's name, it's important to learn this phrase early.

Vocabulary to Ask "How Are You?" in Spanish

First things first. Before you even ask someone how they are, you'll want to say "Hey!" or "Good morning!"The Spanish for this is:

Buenos días (good morning)

In the afternoon, this changes to buenas tardes (good afternoon) and then after sunset, buenas noches (good evening). But for short, you can always use ¡Buenas! (Hey!).Great.Now let's move on to the question: "how are you?"You'd ask this by saying, ¿Cómo estás? This question is made up of two parts:

Cómo (how)

Estás (are you)

So, how do we reply to this?Well, there are many options depending on how you feel:

Muy bien,(Very well)

Bien, (Good)

Más o menos (So-so)

No muy bien (Not so well)

Pro tip: To be polite, add gracias (thank you) at the end of your answer.¡Fantástico! Now let's see all this in practice with a sample conversation.

Sample Conversation: How Are You?

Now we know the vocab, let's look at a sample conversation between Pedro and Andrea.

Pedro: Buenos días Andrea, ¿cómo estás?Andrea: Muy bien, gracias, ¿y tú?Pedro: Muy bien también, graciasAndrea: Buen día, ¡adiós!

Can you guess which phrase means “and you?" That's right, it’s ¿y tú?There were two other new words in this conversation:

Adiós (goodbye)

También (also, as well)

Perfect.

Grammar Note: Did you notice...?

Did you see something strange when learning ¿Cómo estás?Estás is only one word, whereas the English equivalent "are you" is formed of two words.This isn't a mistake! In Spanish, the word for "you" - tú - does exist, but it's not essential to use it. The estás (you are) conjugation implies that you mean tú (you).Because of this, ¿Cómo estás? is the same as ¿Cómo estás tú? They both mean "How are you?"Anyway, we'll dive deeper into the reason for this in a future post.Now you should feel confident with asking and responding to the question "How are you?" in Spanish.In the meantime, why not check out some of Netflix's Spanish-language shows (with subtitles) to help train your ear to recognize the sounds of Spanish?¡Adiós!