Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi! Today I want to show you the difference between QUÉ and CUÁL.
All this and a bit more is coming up.
I'm Sergi Martin, your Spanish teacher on YouTube. As you see, we are in the nature,
We are in the woods and it's very cold. It is all full of snow. Snow! What is
snow? This is snow. Aaah! I'm cold!
As it's very cold, I need a hat.
But here I have three hats. Which one is my hat? This One. Much better.
But I'm still very cold. I have cold hands.
So I need gloves. Here I have many gloves.
Which ones are my gloves? These ones? No. These ones? No. Ah. These ones are my gloves.
To find the difference between QUÉ and CUÁL, it is important to consider some concepts.
We can ask for the definition of a thing or an idea. The definition of a
thing or an idea, is what we do for example in Wikipedia or a traditional encyclopedia
We think about an object or the name of a thing, an idea, and what we
do is to define it. In Spanish, the question to this definition, we can do it with
QUÉ plus the verb SER. Therefore, we say What is the snow? O What are gloves?
This is a glove.
The second important concept to understand this difference between QUÉ and CUÁL is that
we can ask for the differentiation between some identical objects within a group.
How do we explain this? When I had in my hand three different hats,
"Here I have three hats. Which one is my hat?"
I didn't want to ask about the meaning of the
word hat. What I wanted to do is to differentiate three objects with the same name.
How do we make this differentiation? With the word CUÁL plus the verb SER. As I said,
"Which one is my hat?" This CUÁL can have the plural, CUÁLES, so when I have spoken
about the gloves, I said "Which ones are my gloves?"
"Which ones are my gloves? "
Again, I do not ask about the meaning
of the word gloves. I already know what gloves are. I'm asking about the difference
between different gloves.
"These ones? No. These ones? No. Ah. These ones are my gloves. "
Something that sometimes you may be confused as a student of Spanish, is that we can ask for
this difference also with the word QUÉ. We can talk about the differentiation between
gloves with QUÉ plus the name. In this case, "What gloves are mine?"
Or "What hat is mine?"
An easy way to never go wrong is knowing that we never use the word CUÁL
with a name. We never say "Which one hat it's mine?" or "Which ones gloves are my gloves?"
We never use this.
Are there in your language two different words for a differentiation
or a definition? Come On! Share them below in the comments and we all will learn
Spanish, especially you will learn a lot better Spanish. You will understand these two words.
Ah! And do not forget to subscribe, that in addition of being free, it will make you know why
I'm doing a video away from Barcelona, exactly:
Krkonošsky Narodní Park. Where is this?
See you in the next video. ¡Hasta luego!