Learn Spanish (Spain): ¿Eres tú el estudiante nuevo?

¿Eres tú el estudiante nuevo?

Are you the new student?

Breakdown of ¿Eres tú el estudiante nuevo?

new / another, different (before the noun)

Questions & Answers about ¿Eres tú el estudiante nuevo?

Why does the sentence start with 'Eres tú' instead of 'Tú eres'?

In Spanish questions, it is very common to swap the order of the verb (eres) and the subject (tú). You could still say ¿Tú eres el estudiante nuevo? and simply make your voice go up at the end to show it is a question, but swapping the words is a very natural way to ask a yes/no question.

Do I have to include the word 'tú' here?

Not at all! Because the verb form eres only ever means 'you are', you can drop the pronoun completely and just ask ¿Eres el estudiante nuevo?. Including tú in this sentence just adds a little extra emphasis, similar to asking 'Are you the new student?' in English.

Why does 'nuevo' come after 'estudiante'?

In Spanish, describing words (adjectives) almost always come after the person or thing they describe. So, instead of saying 'new student', you say 'student new' (estudiante nuevo).

The word 'estudiante' ends in 'e'. How do we know it is masculine?

Many nouns ending in '-e' can refer to both males and females. We know this specific student is male because of the words around it: the sentence uses the masculine word for 'the' (el) and the masculine word for 'new' (nuevo). If you were asking a female student, you would change those matching words: ¿Eres tú la estudiante nueva?