Estar

You have already learned the verb ser, and you’ve used it to: introduce yourself and others, to describe physical characteristics and personality traits, to indicate place of origin or nationality, to tell time, and to give dates. Spanish has another verb that also means “to be” – estar.  You used estar at the beginning of this course to indicate how you are feeling (¿Cómo estás? Estoy bien, gracias). In addition to indicating how you and others are feeling (which we’ll discuss in a future chapter), estar is used to express location. So, if you are talking about where a person or a thing is located, you will use estar:

estar (to be)
	singular	plural
1a	yo estoy	nosotros estamos
2a	tú estás	vosotros estáis
3a	él ella usted está	ellos ellas ustedes están

As you should notice, estar has an irregular yo form along with accented endings in all but the nosotros form.

To use estar to express the locations of people and things, you’ll need to know some prepositions of location as well:

• alrededor (around)
• al lado de (beside, next to)
• enfrente de (in front of)
• a la derecha de (to the right of)
• a la izquierda de (to the left of)
• debajo de (under)
• en (on, in)
• encima de (on, above)
• detrás de (behind)
• cerca de (close to)
• lejos de (far from)

• Alegría está en su dormitorio. (Alegría is in her bedroom.)
• ¿Dónde está tu restaurante favorito? (Where is your favorite restaurant?)
• Los padres de Benjamín están de vacaciones en Cancún. (Ben’s parents are in Cancún on vacation.)
• Ay de mí, ¿dónde están mis llaves? (Good grief, where are my keys?)
• La cafetería está enfrente de la librería. (The cafeteria is in front of the bookstore.)
• No estoy en clase ahora porque estoy enfermo. (I’m not in class right now because I’m sick.)
• Nosotros estamos cerca del museo pero no podemos encontrarlo. (We’re close to the museum, but we can’t find it.)

¿Dónde?

The question word used to ask about locations is ¿Dónde? (where?). It can be combined with prepositions to ask more specific questions, for example: ¿De dónde? (from where?) and ¿Adónde? (to where?). Remember that question words always need an accent mark, and don’t forget to put the upside-down question mark at the beginning of the question with the upside-right question mark at the end of the question.

• ¿De dónde eres? (Where are you from?)
• Soy de Oneonta, Nueva York. (I am from Oneonta, New York.)
• Ah, y ¿dónde está Oneonta? (Ah, and where is Oneonta?)
• Oneonta está en las montañas; no está cerca de la ciudad de Nueva York. (Oneonta is in the mountains; it’s not close to New York City.)