Breakdown of El cocinero ha freído la carne y está crujiente y sabrosa.
y
and
la carne
the meat
estar
to be (location/state)
haber
to have (auxiliary)
freír
to fry
el cocinero
the cook, the chef
crujiente
crispy
sabroso
tasty
Questions & Answers about El cocinero ha freído la carne y está crujiente y sabrosa.
Why does the sentence use ha freído? Isn't the word for "fried" frito?
The verb freír (to fry) is special because it has two past participles: the regular freído and the irregular frito. As this lesson shows, you often use the regular form (freído) after the helper verb haber to form compound tenses. But if you use "fried" as a descriptive adjective, you must use the irregular form (la carne frita). Note that for this specific verb, Spanish rules actually accept both ha freído and ha frito, but freído can never be used as an adjective.
Why do we use está instead of es for "it is crispy and tasty"?
We use está because we are describing the specific result of the cook's actions. It tells us how this particular piece of meat turned out today. If we used es, it would imply a permanent characteristic, meaning that meat in general is always naturally crispy and tasty.
Both adjectives describe la carne, so why does sabrosa end in an "a" but crujiente doesn't?
The word sabroso (tasty) is an adjective that ends in -o, so it must change to its feminine form, sabrosa, to match the feminine noun la carne. However, adjectives that end in -e in their base form, like crujiente (crispy), are gender-neutral. They stay the same for both masculine and feminine nouns.
Why does freído have an accent mark on the "i"?
The accent mark breaks up what would naturally be a single sound. When a weak vowel like i is next to a strong vowel like e, they usually blend together. Adding the accent on the í forces them apart so the word is pronounced as three distinct syllables: fre-í-do.
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