Learn Spanish (Spain): Los museos están cerrados.

Los museos están cerrados.

The museums are closed.

Breakdown of Los museos están cerrados.

estar

to be (location/state)

Elon.io is an online learning platform

We have an entire course teaching Spanish (Spain) grammar and vocabulary.

Start learning Spanish (Spain) now

Questions & Answers about Los museos están cerrados.

Why do we use están instead of son in this sentence?

We use están (from the verb estar) because being closed is a temporary state or condition. If we were talking about a permanent characteristic or identity of the museums, we would use a form of ser.

Why does cerrados end in -os?

In Spanish, adjectives must match the noun they describe in both gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular or plural). Since los museos (the museums) is a masculine plural noun, the adjective cerrado (closed) changes to its masculine plural form, cerrados.

Why is there an accent mark on the 'a' in están?

The accent mark tells you to put the spoken stress on the last syllable: es-TÁN. Words ending in 'n', 's', or a vowel normally have the stress on the second-to-last syllable, so the accent mark breaks that rule to give us the correct pronunciation.

Is cerrados a verb or an adjective here?

Here, it acts as an adjective. While it comes from the action verb cerrar (to close), using it with estar turns it into a description of the museums' current condition (they are in a closed state).