Being able to give and to ask for personal information is essential when learning a new language. Below, we share with you useful words, expressions, questions, and answers used when sharing and exchanging personal information.

To start, here we have some common Interrogatives (or questions words):

Most of the above words are similar to English, but remember, we can’t translate some of these questions from English to Spanish or vice versa. A good example of this is “¿Cuántos años tienes?”. In Spanish we don’t use “ser” or “estar” (to be) to say how old people are, but “tener” (to have).

Another common area of confusion for English speakers learning Spanish is the difference between “qué” and “cuál”.  Both can mean “what”, but only ‘cuál’ means “which”.   Use “cuál” when the question you’re asking has multiple options as answers (for example, ¿Cuál es tu número de teléfono? There are numerous different telephone numbers that exist).  Use “qué” when asking for specific information (¿A qué te dedicas? In this case, there is only one specific job you have right now).

Getting to Know Others by Asking Personal Questions

Here we’ve given you some basic questions and answers you can use to get to know people better. 

This next table has a lot of the same questions as the above, but using the plural forms “ustedes” and “nosotros”. 

This table below shows the same questions, but in the third person or when we talk about other people. 

In this post, we covered lots of common question words in Spanish (interrogatives), which are used to form useful questions. We’ve also shown you how to respond to these questions too.  To complement this vocabulary, check out our post Useful expressions in Spanish.