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Why in the below two sentences do the pronouns come after the conjugated verb?

¿Consideran ustedes que está en lo correcto?

¿Consideras tú que España y el Papa deberían pedir perdón por la conquista de América hace 500 años, y por qué?

1 Answer 1

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In questions, the standard order is to place the pronouns —actually really just the subject— after the verb.

If there is an interrogative word (like dónde, cuándo, etc), this is almost universal, although the Caribbean is well known for often placing the pronoun between the interrogative and the verb. Either way is perfectly grammatically fine (although the Caribbean way sounds a bit funny to me) and doesn't imply any change of meaning.

In a binary (yes/no) question, the change in order tends to imply a slight change in meaning. Taking your first question:

  • ¿Consideran ustedes que está en lo correcto?
    In this case, we want to know and we begin from a position of not knowing (although by using está and not esté, there is an ever so slight implication that y'all do consider it so). This is analogous to the standard English question Do y'all consider…?
  • ¿Ustedes consideran que está en lo correcto?
    This may be used to either first transfer attention to ustedes from someone else or, if the attention is already held, we are asking it from a position of having understand that their answer is yes, and we are trying to get clarification. This is equivalent to English's Y'all consider…?
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  • these two questions were posted on twitter by someone from Ecuador.
    – sf_admin
    Mar 29, 2019 at 3:26
  • @sf_admin binary questions are done the same across the Spanish speaking world, I only have the mention for the Caribbean to provide a full answer (the question title and the question body are slightly different) Mar 29, 2019 at 3:30

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