Breakdown of ¿Dónde está tu madre?
dónde
where
estar
to be (location/state)
tu
your (singular)
la madre
the mother
Questions & Answers about ¿Dónde está tu madre?
Why is there no accent mark on tu?
Madre is feminine, so why don't we use a feminine form of tu?
Why do we use está instead of es for "is"?
We use the verb estar (here, está) when talking about locations. Even though a mother is a person, asking where she is means we are talking about her physical location, so we must use estar.
Why does Dónde have an accent mark?
In Spanish, question words like dónde (where), cómo (how), and qué (what) always take a written accent mark when they are used to ask a question.