Breakdown of Es importante cuidarse cuando hace frío.
Questions & Answers about Es importante cuidarse cuando hace frío.
Cuidarse is the reflexive form of cuidar and means to take care of oneself.
- cuidar = to take care (of something/someone else)
- Cuidar a los niños = to take care of the children
- cuidarse = to take care of yourself / oneself
- Es importante cuidarse = It’s important to take care of yourself / oneself
In this sentence we’re talking about taking care of your own health/condition, so Spanish uses the reflexive form cuidarse.
Here se is a reflexive pronoun that refers back to the subject in a general, impersonal way: people in general / oneself.
So cuidarse literally means to take care of oneself, but in context it’s understood as:
- Es importante cuidarse ≈ It’s important to take care of yourself / to take care of oneself / to take care of ourselves.
Spanish often uses se like this for general statements that apply to anyone.
Yes, both are correct, but they’re different structures and have slightly different focuses:
Es importante cuidarse.
- Structure: Es + adjective + infinitive
- General statement, impersonal, like It’s important to take care of yourself / oneself (in general).
Es importante que te cuides.
- Structure: Es + adjective + que + subjunctive
- More directly aimed at a specific person (tú) and uses the subjunctive: te cuides.
- Feels more like: It’s important that you take care of yourself.
Meaning is very close, but cuidarse is more general/impersonal; que te cuides sounds more personal and a bit more emphatic.
For talking about the weather (temperature) in Spanish, hacer is the standard verb:
- Hace frío. = It’s cold.
- Hace calor. = It’s hot.
- Hace buen/mal tiempo. = The weather is nice/bad.
es frío / está frío usually refer to something being cold as a quality or state, not the weather in general:
- El agua está fría. = The water is cold.
- Este lugar es muy frío en invierno. = This place is very cold in winter.
So for the weather right now / generally, you use hace frío.
Grammatically, hace in weather expressions is often treated as having an implicit “it” subject, like English it in it is cold, but in Spanish there is no actual pronoun:
- Hace frío. → literally something like “Makes cold.”
Spanish doesn’t use a subject pronoun (like ello) here. It’s just a fixed impersonal structure used to talk about weather.
Spanish does not use a dummy it subject for weather, time, etc.
- English: It is cold.
- Spanish: Hace frío. (no pronoun)
In Spanish you only use a subject pronoun if it actually refers to something specific. The English it in weather expressions doesn’t refer to anything concrete, so Spanish simply leaves it out and uses an impersonal verb form.
You can hear cuando está frío, but it’s used differently and sounds less neutral for general “cold weather”:
cuando hace frío
- Standard way to say when it’s cold (weather/temperature)
- Very natural and general
cuando está frío
- Tends to refer to something specific being in a cold state:
- Cuando está frío el cuarto, prendo la calefacción.
- For general weather, it can sound unusual or too vague without a clear subject.
- Tends to refer to something specific being in a cold state:
So in your sentence, cuando hace frío is the most natural and idiomatic choice.
Formally it means when, but in general statements like this it can have an “if/whenever” feeling:
- Es importante cuidarse cuando hace frío.
- Literally: It’s important to take care of yourself when it’s cold.
- Interpreted as: Whenever it’s cold / If it’s cold, it’s important to take care of yourself.
So grammatically it’s when, but in English we might naturally translate the idea as when/whenever/if depending on context.
With cuando, the mood and tense depend on the type of action:
Present, habitual or general truth → use present indicative
- Es importante cuidarse cuando hace frío.
- General fact: whenever it’s cold, this is true.
Future or uncertain event (after a main future) → use subjunctive
- Te llamaré cuando haga frío. = I’ll call you when it gets cold.
Here we’re talking about a general, habitual situation, so hace (present indicative) is correct.
Yes, that’s perfectly correct and very natural:
- Cuando hace frío, es importante cuidarse.
- Es importante cuidarse cuando hace frío.
Both mean the same thing. Moving cuando hace frío to the front just puts a bit more emphasis on the condition “when it’s cold”, but the meaning is essentially identical.
In this context, cuidarse is quite broad and usually covers:
- protecting your health (wearing warm clothes, avoiding getting sick)
- being careful in general (not exposing yourself to the cold, maybe driving carefully on icy roads, etc.)
It’s a flexible verb that often means something like: to look after yourself / to take care of yourself / to be careful with yourself. The exact nuance depends on context; here, because of hace frío, it mainly suggests health and protection from the cold.
No, for taking care of someone else you use cuidar, not cuidarse:
- Es importante cuidar a nuestros hijos cuando hace frío.
Here:
- cuidar a nuestros hijos = to take care of our children
- cuidarse would mean taking care of oneself, so it wouldn’t fit that meaning.
Yes, you can, and they’re all correct but with different references:
Es importante cuidarse.
- General: It’s important to take care of oneself / yourself (people in general).
Es importante cuidarte.
- Specific tú: It’s important to take care of yourself (you in particular).
Es importante cuidarnos.
- nosotros: It’s important to take care of ourselves.
In Spanish, after an infinitive like cuidar, the reflexive pronoun is attached to the end: cuidarse, cuidarte, cuidarnos, cuidarse (ustedes/ellos).
In English, that comma would usually be wrong or at least unusual too, unless you’re adding a pause for style.
In Spanish, the normal rule is:
No comma when the cuando-clause comes at the end:
- Es importante cuidarse cuando hace frío.
Comma when the cuando-clause comes first:
- Cuando hace frío, es importante cuidarse.
So the punctuation in the original Spanish sentence follows standard rules.
Grammatically, no. The sentence:
- Es importante cuidarse cuando hace frío.
is perfectly natural and standard in both Spain and Latin America.
Differences would only be in pronunciation and possibly in how people expand on it in conversation, but the structure and words themselves are neutral and universal across the Spanish-speaking world.