Breakdown of No estés asustada; no pasa nada.
no
no, not
estar
to be (location/state)
nada
nothing
asustado
scared
Questions & Answers about No estés asustada; no pasa nada.
Why does the sentence use the subjunctive estés right at the beginning instead of estás?
Here, no estés is a negative command meaning "Don't be." In Spanish, all negative commands use the present subjunctive form. So the subjunctive conjugations you are learning right now for emotion triggers like me alegra que are exactly the same forms you use to tell someone not to do something!
Why do we use estar (estés) instead of ser (seas) with asustada?
How can we tell from this sentence that the speaker is talking to a woman?
The word asustada (scared) acts as an adjective here and ends in an -a, which matches the feminine gender of the person being spoken to. If the speaker were talking to a man, they would say No estés asustado.
Literally, what does no pasa nada mean, and why are there two negative words?
The verb pasar frequently means "to happen." So, no pasa nada literally translates to "nothing is happening" or "doesn't happen nothing." It is the standard Spanish idiom for "nothing is wrong," "don't worry," or "it's okay." The double negative (no before the verb and nada after) is completely correct and required in Spanish.
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