Breakdown of ¿Está actualizado el antivirus de la oficina?
de
from / of
estar
to be (location/state)
la oficina
office
actualizar
to update
el antivirus
antivirus
Questions & Answers about ¿Está actualizado el antivirus de la oficina?
Why use está actualizado instead of es actualizado?
We use estar with a past participle to form the state passive, which describes the existing result of an action. We want to know if the software is currently sitting in an updated state. If you used es actualizado, you would be using the event passive to ask about the action itself, such as asking if the antivirus gets updated regularly by the IT department.
Why are está and actualizado next to each other, instead of split by the subject like in English?
In English, we split the verb phrase in questions, asking 'Is the antivirus updated?'. In Spanish, compound verb structures and state passives like está actualizado are usually kept together. The subject el antivirus naturally falls after the entire verb phrase, though it is also grammatically correct to put the subject at the very beginning of the sentence.
Is antivirus singular or plural here?
It is singular. Words ending in -virus, like el virus and el antivirus, end in an s even in their singular form. Because it is a singular masculine noun, both the verb está and the past participle actualizado must be conjugated in their singular masculine forms to match it. If we were talking about multiple programs, it would be los antivirus están actualizados.
Can I translate 'the office's antivirus' as la oficina antivirus to save words?
No, because Spanish never uses nouns as adjectives directly before another noun, and there is no apostrophe-s for possession. You must always use the formula 'noun + de + owner or location'. This is why the sentence uses el antivirus de la oficina, which literally translates to 'the antivirus of the office'.
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