Some interrogative pronouns in Spanish (qué meaning what, como meaning how, cuánto/a meaning how much, cuántos/as meaning how many, quién meaning who) can be used in non-interrogative sentences, with exclamation marks (¡!), to express emotions (surprise, fear, pain, joy, anger, etc.), to indicate the large size or the high intensity of something, and to express the high amount or the high number of things:
¡Qué + noun, adjective, or adverb! | ¡Qué sorpresa! | What a surprise! |
¡Qué interesante! | How interesting! | |
¡Qué bien! | How awesome! | |
¡Cómo + de + adjective! | ¡Cómo de grande está tu hijo! | Your son has grown up so much! |
¡Cómo + verb! | ¡Cómo corren! | How they run! |
¡Cuánto + verb! | ¡Cuánto lo siento! | How they run! |
¡Cuánta luz! | So much light! | |
¡Cuántos/as + adjective! | ¡Cuántos gatos! | So many cats! |
¡Quién + verb! | ¡Quién tuviera tiempo! | If only I could have time! |
Are you ready to know more? Keep on reading.
How to form exclamative sentences in Spanish?
Exclamative sentences use exclamative pronouns (qué meaning what, como meaning how, cuánto/a meaning how much, cuántos/as meaning how many, quién meaning who), which need an accent to differentiate them from the Spanish relative pronouns. They also need exclamation points, both at the beginning and at the end of the sentence (¡!) to differentiate them from questions. Exclamative pronouns are typically placed at the beginning of a sentence or clause. Often times these expressions don’t have an explicit subject:
However, when they do, the subject is placed after the verb:
Need a refresher on how to place accents in Spanish? Click the link for more information!
Now, let’s explore how each of the pronouns is used.
‘¡Qué’ + noun/adjective/adverb!
¡Qué! meaning what can be used with nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. It usually indicates the large size or the high intensity of something:
Some expressions that use adjectives in English are used with nouns in Spanish:
¡Qué frío! meaning It’s so cold!¡Qué calor hace! meaning It’s so hot!¡Qué hambre tengo! meaning I'm so hungry!When the noun is followed by a verb, we can colloquially add a que before the verb in these expressions:
¡Qué hambre que tengo!Translation: I'm so hungry!We can also use ¡qué...! with a combination of adjective + noun; ¡qué! is used to reinforce the adjective:
¡Qué rica comida!Translation: What a delicious meal!We can optionally insert más meaning more or tan meaning so to enhance the quality of the adjective that is modifying the noun. In this case, we switch the order of the words to: noun + más/tan + adjective. Tan and más can be used interchangeably.
¡Qué casa tan grande!Translation: What a big house!¡Qué clase más interesante!Translation: What an interesting class!Qué can also be used with an adverb modifying a verb in which case we would use: ¡qué + adverb + verb!:
¡Qué rápido comiste!Translation: You ate so fast!
¡Cómo’ + ‘de’ + adjective!
¡Cómo! meaning how is used with the preposition de followed by an adjective to emphasize the quality described by the adjective:
‘¡Cómo’ + verb!
¡Cómo! is used with verbs to express the high intensity of the action described by the verb:
‘¡Cuánto!’
Both ¡cuánto meaning how much + verb! and ¡cuánto/a/s + noun! are typically used to express a high amount or a high number of things as you would use "so" in English:
With verbs
Invariable ¡cuánto! is used with verbs:
¡Cuánto lo siento!Translation: I am so sorry!¡Cuánto dormiste anoche!Translation: You slept so much last night!With nouns
¡Cuánto! is used with singular masculine nouns, whereas ¡cuánta! is used with singular feminine nouns:
¡Cuánto amor!Translation: So much love!¡Cuánta gente hay aquí!Translation: So many people here!¡Cuántos! meaning how many is used with plural masculine nouns, whereas we use ¡cuántas! with feminine plural nouns. Both are used to indicate a high number of things:
¡Cuántos gatos!Translation: So many cats!¡Cuántas manzanas!Translation: So many apples!
‘¡Quién’ + verb!
The pronoun ¡quién! meaning who is used with verbs in the imperfect subjunctive. They normally express a desire:
Now that you know how to use these words to show emotion, you might be interested in how to use Spanish interrogative words in questions, for that, we have a post!
Summary
Some interrogative pronouns can be used in non-interrogative exclamative sentences to express certain emotions:
¡Qué! is used with nouns, adjectives (and a combination of both), and adverbs. It indicates how big or intense something is.
¡Cómo! is used with both de + adjectives and with verbs. With de + adjectives, it's used to intensify the meaning of the adjective. With verbs, it's used to describe how intensely someone performed the action of the verb.
¡Cuánto! is used with verbs, whereas ¡cuánto/a! is used with masculine and feminine nouns, respectively. These expressions indicate a high amount or a high number of something.
¡Cuántos/as! are used with masculine and feminine plural nouns, respectively. We use these to indicate the high number of something.
¡Quién! is used with verbs to indicate the desire to achieve what the verb suggests.
Ready to practice? Here’s a couple of activities with an answer key!
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