Breakdown of La cafetería de la escuela es pequeña.
ser
to be
de
from / of
pequeño
small
la escuela
the school
la cafetería
the cafeteria, the coffee shop
Questions & Answers about La cafetería de la escuela es pequeña.
The current lesson is about estar, so why does this sentence use es?
Even though we are learning about estar for locations and temporary states, here we are describing a basic characteristic of the cafeteria: its size. Because being small is a defining physical trait of the building rather than a temporary condition or its geographical location, we use es (from the verb ser).
Why is it La cafetería de la escuela instead of La escuela cafetería?
In English, we often put nouns right next to each other like "school cafeteria" to describe something. Spanish does not do this. Instead, you have to use de (meaning "of") to link them, literally saying "the cafeteria of the school."
Why does pequeña end in an "a"?
Descriptive words (adjectives) in Spanish must match the gender of the noun they describe. Because la cafetería is a feminine noun, the word for "small" must be in its feminine form pequeña instead of the masculine form pequeño.
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