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Questions & Answers about Buenos días, ¿cómo está?
Why is it buenos días and not buen día?
Buenos días is the most standard and widely understood morning greeting across the Spanish-speaking world.
A few helpful points:
- Buenos días is a fixed expression, even though English uses the singular good morning.
- Spanish often uses plural forms in greetings:
- buenos días
- buenas tardes
- buenas noches
- In some Latin American regions, especially parts of the Southern Cone, you may also hear buen día, but buenos días is the safest choice for learners.
So if you want one version that works almost everywhere, use buenos días.
Why is it ¿cómo está? and not ¿cómo estás?
Está is the formal form, used with usted.
- ¿Cómo está? = formal / polite
- ¿Cómo estás? = informal, used with tú
This means the sentence is addressing someone politely, such as:
- a stranger
- an older person
- a customer
- a teacher
- someone in a professional setting
In much of Latin America, using the formal form is very common in polite conversation.
Where is usted? Shouldn’t it be ¿cómo está usted?