Questions & Answers about El gato es muy limpio.
Why do we use es (from ser) here instead of está (from estar)? Isn't being clean a temporary state?
It depends on what you want to express! By using es, the sentence describes an inherent characteristic or personality trait. It means "The cat is a clean animal" (it grooms itself, it uses the litter box). If you used está (El gato está muy limpio), it would describe a temporary physical state, meaning the cat is free of dirt right now (for example, right after you gave it a bath).
If we were talking about a female cat, would the word limpio change?
Why do we use muy instead of mucho here?
Muy translates to "very" and is used right before adjectives, like limpio (clean) or rápido (fast). Mucho translates to "a lot" or "much" and is used with nouns (like mucho tiempo - a lot of time) or to describe how much a verb happens. Since "clean" is an adjective describing the cat, you must use muy.
If I wanted to say "Cats are very clean" (talking about all cats), how would this change?
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