Questions & Answers about El café está muy caliente.
Why do we use está instead of es in this sentence?
We use está (from the verb estar) because being hot is a temporary physical state. The coffee is hot right now, but it will cool down. If we used es (from the verb ser), it would imply that being hot is a permanent, defining characteristic of this coffee! Would caliente change if we were talking about a feminine noun, like soup (la sopa)?
No, it would stay exactly the same: la sopa está caliente. Adjectives that end in -e in Spanish do not have separate masculine and feminine forms, unlike adjectives that end in -o or -a. Can I use mucho instead of muy and say el café está mucho caliente?
No, you must use muy (very) here. You use muy right before adjectives like caliente to make them stronger. Mucho means 'a lot' or 'much' and is used with nouns (like mucho café = a lot of coffee) or after verbs. Why does está have an accent mark on the final 'a'?
The accent mark tells you to put the spoken stress on that last syllable: es-TÁ. It also helps distinguish it in writing from esta (without an accent), which means 'this' (as in esta taza, this cup). Learn El café está muy caliente and more in Spanish
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