Learn Spanish (Spain): ¿Dónde vives tú?

¿Dónde vives tú?

Where do you live?

Breakdown of ¿Dónde vives tú?

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Questions & Answers about ¿Dónde vives tú?

Since the verb is vivir (to live), why does the 'you' form end in -es instead of '-is'?

For regular -ir verbs like vivir, you drop the -ir and add the ending -es to make the tú (you) form. Interestingly, regular -er and -ir verbs share the exact same ending for the tú form, which makes them a little easier to memorize!

Where is the word for 'do' in this sentence?

Spanish doesn't use helping verbs like 'do' or 'does' to ask questions. The single word vives covers both 'you live' and 'do you live'. Because of this, the literal translation of this question is simply 'Where live you?'.

Why is the word for 'you' (tú) at the very end of the sentence?

In Spanish questions, it is very common to swap the word order and put the subject pronoun after the verb. However, you could also just say ¿Dónde vives? and drop the tú entirely, because the verb ending -es already tells us exactly who you are asking.

Why do both Dónde and tú have accent marks over their vowels?

In Spanish, question words like dónde (where) always carry a written accent. The accent on tú (you) serves a different purpose: it is used to tell it apart from the word tu (your). Without the accent mark, they would look identical but mean entirely different things.