Thus far, you have seen both the verb estar and the verb tener. You have learned that the verb estar can be used to express the location of people or things, to talk about the weather, and to form part of the present progressive tense. In terms of tener, in the previous lessons you have seen that this verb is used to communicate the age of people, as well as to talk about possessions that you or other people have.
Both of these verbs are also used to talk about the physical or emotional state of a person at a particular moment in time. However, the verbs are used to describe different states. With tener, will be able to describe certain things that you actually feel, physically, such as hunger or cold. The expressions that use tener are followed by nouns—frío, calor, sueño, hambre, prisa, etc.
Estar is more often utilized to describe emotional states and is used with adjectives, like sad, happy, angry, or worried. Since you will be using estar with adjectives, it is important to keep gender and number agreement in mind, and make sure that the adjective agrees with the subject of the sentence. For some of the adjectives used with estar, like alegre or triste, you will only have to worry about number agreement since the adjectives end in –e for both the masculine and feminine form:
 Miguel está triste. |
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| Ana también está triste. |
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| Nosotros estamos alegres. |
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| Vicente y Carla están alegres. |
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| Yo estoy alegre. |
For other adjectives that you use with estar, you will need to pay attention to both gender and number agreement:
| Javier está muy contento. |
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| Isabel y Juana no están muy contentas. |
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| Mi madre está muy ocupada. |
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| Elian está un poco preocupado. |
You can find the conjugation of estar in this lesson and below, you can quickly review the conjugation of tener that you have learned already.
| tener – to have (tiempo presente) | ||||||||||||
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Below you will see and hear several more examples of how these expressions are used.
| Sonia | ¿Tienes frío? |
| Wilfredo | No, tengo calor. |
| Rosalía | ¿Cómo estás? |
| César | Estoy muy cansado.  |
| Marcela | ¿Quieres comer? |
| Orlando | No, no tengo hambre. |
| Regina | ¿Cómo está Susana? |
| Ignacio | Está un poco deprimida. |
| Liticia | ¿Por qué está tan preocupado Emilio? |
| Alberto | Está preocupado porque tiene un examen de física hoy.  |
| Julia | ¿Mariana está muy ocupada? |
| Elías | No, ella no está muy ocupada porque está de vacaciones. |
| Carmen | ¿Cómo estás? |
| Gaspar | Tengo mucho sueño. |
Practice the new vocabulary with the Quizlet below.
