"La cena estuvo muy buena."
Translation:The dinner was very good.
94 Comments
why estar here? in the present, 'the dinner is good', would be la cena es muy buena, wouldn't it? so why not la cena era muy buena?
- 25
- 14
- 3
- 1967
Google translate uses "era" here. Seems like a fundamental description and of something that will always be true. That makes me think "ser" but the rules are so complex I'm open to anything being right here. "La cena era muy buena" has 2,830,000 google results and "La cena estuvo muy buena" has 160,000 results. Close enough to still be ambiguous to me. "Era" is the Imperfect and "estuvo" is the Preterit. Though the distinction is lost on me.
- 18
Interesting discussion. I think the imperfect is more likely to be used than the preterite here because it 'sets the scene' about a continuous action in the past, although both can be used. The ser/estar distinction I don't really understand here; ser is more common but both seem to be fine.
Here, the use of estar implies that this particular dinner was very good. Ser would be used if the dinner was typically always good. The past tense implies that the dinner is completed. The imperfect, I think, would be used if the dinner was still ongoing. At least, that's my understanding.
Because in spanish ESTAR is most used than ES .... But these words are the same, For example nobody here,( In MEXICO ) Says ¨la cena era muy buena¨, It is most normal say : la cena estuvo muy buena.... PD: I live In Mexico
- 14
- 4
- 4
- 2
Good question. I learned the use of estar would suggest that dinner was particularly good on this night.
- 23
- 22
- 17
- 14
- 14
- 12
- 11
- 10
- 9
- 8
- 7
- 4
- 2
- 830
Era may convey the meaning that it was good before, but is no longer.
The use of 'era' is also correct, even a better translation in this case.
- 25
- 17
- 15
- 3
- 3
"Really" ought to serve just as well as "very." No life-and-death issue though; just sayin'.
- 25
- 12
- 2
"Cena" is specifically an evening meal, which in English is "dinner" or "supper," or even sometimes "tea" (there's some variation in dialect about that). A breakfast, for example, is always a meal but never a dinner.
- 25
- 12
- 2
Perhaps an example. I consider all apples to be things, but it would be a mistake to translate "Como una manzana" as "I eat a thing."
- 9
- 8
- 5
- 5
- 2
- 2
Fui means "i went or i was" like "yo fui al parque- i went to the park" ir " yo fui muy feliz - i was very happy" and estuvo means that something or someone was something " el estuvo en la luna - he was in the moon" in this case estuvo was correct because it says that the dinner was good. Hope it helped.
Why wouldn't it be fue instead of estuvo? I haven't even studied era yet, so I'm not sure why it could be that.
- 25
- 12
- 2
Best as I can dig up, "está bien/está buena" is simply the idiomatic phrase for food that tastes good. That is, the choice of estuvo here is not particularly related to the usual rules for ser vs. estar.
- 11
- 4
Why can't I say 'nice' instead of 'good'? That's acceptable in English, thus should be for the translation.
- 25
- 12
- 2
Estuvo is preterite tense; estaba is imperfect. The former is for (past) actions with a definite beginning and end.
- 17
- 9
- 7
- 2
I say 'tea' instead of 'dinner' in real life, and 'dinner' instead of 'lunch'. This is really annoying because I keep getting this question wrong because Duolingo doesn't accept 'tea' as an answer. But to complicate things further, there's another definition of tea which is the hot drink, so then people who don't say tea as dinner in real life will get confused. Can we PLEASE have a setting on Duolingo to whether we are American/English?
- 15
- 6
palaash- Normally, in many cases, when there is an accent at the preterito perfecto simple, it's because you have the same word in an other tense. EX :yo olvido, present tense. él olvidó, past tense. yo termino, present, él terminó, past. The accent makes the difference.
- 25
- 12
- 2
We are indeed, but "estar" has a highly irregular conjugation. If it were a regular -ar verb the third person preterite would be "estó," but it's not.