Learn Spanish (Latin America): El calendario está en la cocina.

Está comes from the verb estar, which we use to talk about locations. Even though the calendar might always stay in the kitchen, Spanish always uses estar to say where a physical object is located. We save es (from ser) for things like descriptions, identity, or telling the time.

Does the word en always mean "in"?

Not always! The Spanish word en is very flexible and can mean "in," "on," or "at" depending on the context. Here, en la cocina means "in the kitchen," but if you said en la mesa, it would usually mean "on the table."

Calendario and cocina use different words for "the" (el and la). Why is that?

In Spanish, nouns have a gender. Calendario ends in -o, which usually indicates a masculine word, so it uses el. Cocina ends in -a, which usually indicates a feminine word, so it uses la.

How does this tie into how we express dates on the calendar?