HomeQ&AWhat is the difference between saying Como se llama? or Como te llamas?
What is the difference between saying Como se llama? or Como te llamas?
¿Cómo se llama? and ¿Cómo te llamas? mean the same thing so what's the difference? I think one of them is a more formal question but I don't know which one it is.
25962 views
updated SEP 14, 2009
posted by jerimwoll
Hi jeri, nicely put question, your first sentence is the formal one. - 00494d19, SEP 10, 2009
3 Answers
Look up the personal prounouns tú and usted and you should be able to figure this out for yourself.
updated SEP 14, 2009
posted by Izanoni1
Why cant you just answer the question - scott8117, SEP 14, 2009
The first is formal, cómo se llama, used with strangers. The second is informal used normally with children. Also used with friends or family, however, in this instance it would probably only be used by someone who has a memory problem, because if you don´t know the names of your friends or family, there must be something wrong.
updated SEP 10, 2009
posted by Eddy
Or you would "like to" forget their names. - 0074b507, SEP 10, 2009
updated SEP 10, 2009
edited by FTA84
posted by FTA84
Question
- Simplified Chinese (China)
Spanish (Spain)
English (US)
Russian
Question about Spanish (Spain)
What is the difference between ¿Cómo se llama? and ¿Cómo te llamas? ?Feel free to just provide example sentences.
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- Simplified Chinese (China)
I wonder why the first one is "se"and the other is "te"
- Spanish (Mexico)
The first one is when you ask about someone else's name (what's his/her name?) and the second one is when you ask directly to a person what his/her name is (what's your name?)
- Catalan
- Spanish (Spain)
Fairy06 is right.
However, both can also be used to ask "what's your name?". The difference is formality: "cómo se llama" is formal and "cómo te llamas" is informal.
- Simplified Chinese (China)
- Spanish (Spain)
- English (UK) Near fluent
¿Cómo te llamas [(informal) tú]?
¿Cómo se llama [él/ella/(formal) usted]?
Spanish
formal addressing avoids "tú" as a too direct approach. The formal "usted", which effectively is a formal kind of "tú", actually appears to refer to a different person, like he or she, even though you are talking directly to someone.
In Latin America, parts of the south of Spain and the Canary Islands, "ustedes" is the only plural for "tú", and it is neutral (neither formal nor informal), whereas in the rest of Spain only, "vosotros" is the informal plural of "tú" and "ustedes" is the formal
plural of "usted".
- Simplified Chinese (China)
- Spanish (Spain)
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