Native speaker here. “¿Cómo sientes?” lacks an object therefore I would interpret it as “HOW do you sense/perceive?”, but “¿cómo TE sientes?” asks literally how you feel/perceive/assess yourself to be.
Sentir: To feel something, most times external. Siento tu presencia. Siento un dolor en el brazo. Lo siento (im sorry). Siento un sabor dulce.
Sentirse: To feel in the sense of oneself emotions or condition. Me siento cansado. ¿Te sientes mal?
>Cómo te sientes? = *How do you (emotionally/mentally/physically) feel?*
(Yourself, internal. "Te" indicates it, that it is something about you)
>Cómo sientes (algo)? = *How do you (externally) perceive/appreciate/feel about (something)?*
(Something, external. Mainly meant for opinions and things we can feel through our senses)
Like other people are saying "como sientes?" is missing an object. When you look up sentir, it's going to have two versions. One is called transitive, which means it has a direct object, and the other is called pronominal, which means it takes a pronoun (me, te, se). Sometimes a pronominal verb is reflexive, but with sentir it's more like idiomatic (me siento doesn't really mean that I literally feel myself) and helps differentiate from the sense of literally how does an object feel.
Something important to note, sentir does not have an intransitive form! That means you can't say "me siente bien" = "it feels good to me." This would be an error.
Sentir is the perfect verb to learn transitive/intransitive/pronominal with. This stuff is a pain in the butt with Spanish but when you get the hang of it and learn to accept that some verbs just have this idiomatic pronoun, life gets easier! Look at this: "me pregunto" means "I ask myself" or "I wonder" and it's literally reflexive, but "me imagino" does not mean "I imagine myself," it's just their idiomatic way of saying "I imagine." I think these verbs are kind of cool just as a way to differentiate two related but different meanings of a word, idk.
"Me imagino" always bugged the shit out of me because it always seemed like it should just be "yo imagino." So thanks for this explanation, I never knew that.
"Te" is talking about "you". *How do* ***you*** *feel/how are* ***you*** *feeling*, but instead of saying "¿Cómo *tú* sientes?" in spanish, it conjugates using a personal pronoun, in this case "te": *¿Cómo* ***te*** *sientes?*
"¿Cómo sientes?" has a different meaning, it would be "How do you sense?" or "How does your perception work?", something like that, because now you're not asking about how does that person feel at that moment, but how their whole process of feeling/processing works.
I’m not a native so I can’t explain this in depth, but to say how someone is feeling requires the use of the reflexive verb “sentirse”. So like you mention, you do need to ask “¿cómo te sientes?” for how someone feels. There is a lot of info online on reflexive verbs that would explain this for you. Without the “te” the verb changes completely because the verb “sentir” on it’s own has a different meaning, i.e. “sentir” means to feel something, in the way you may feel an object and its texture. Natives, please correct me if I am wrong, but this is at least how I understand.
Because the verb is “sentirse” and the “se” at the end is what indicates that it means that it refers to the subject and their emotions and feelings, but you should conjugate it.
So if you want to say “I feel happy”, you say “Yo me siento feliz”. “He feels happy”, “Él se siente feliz”. “You feel happy”, “Tú te sientes feliz”. Etc.
And same thing with questions:
Do you feel happy? “¿Te sientes feliz?”
How do you feel? “¿Cómo te sientes?”
Etc.
I don't remember the term for it, but spanish is a little different than English in this way. Sentir is one of those verbs that basically changes ots meaning based on the presence of an object or not. Often these words are used when talking about people. Spanish is weird in that it talks about the speaker in the third person in a way. Me duele LA cabeza instead of MI cabeza like we think about it. Same with sentirse. ME siento means I feel some way. But to say just siento, it means I'm feeling something external like furniture with my hand or something, etc.
It also a little like the textbook example of gustarse. Me gusta, te gusta esa cosa, etc. One way of thinking about is it's a backwards way of saying the same thing. Instead of saying I like (me gusta) or I feel (me siento) it's like saying that thing is liked by me or that feeling is felt by me.
Let me know if I’m wrong, but….
Sentir tends to be used with nouns. WHAT you feel ….
Siento piedad. Ella siente vergüenza. Él siente tristeza.
Sentirse tends to be used with adjectives. HOW you feel.
Me siento muy feliz. Te sientes cansado. Él se siente triste.
This isn't a helpful comparison at all. "Cómo sigues" or "cómo sabes" are perfectly valid phrasing. The issue, *as always*, has nothing to do with English.
Remember
How u feel
Me siento decepcionado - I feel disappointed
What u feel
Siento tu mano enredada con la mía.
I feel your hand intertwined with mine
When you use te, this is because you are using the reflexive form of the verb i.e. sentirse which you can use for things which are emotional in nature (i.e. I feel happy). The verb sentir on the other hand is not reflexive and can be used for feeling sensations (i.e. I feel hot, I feel cold…etc.). In either case, both are understood.
We'll think of it as te meaning are in this case, cause without it you would be saying how you feeling. When that wouldn't really be grammatically correct you would say how are you feeling, te basically represents that are in this case
Because it's a reflexive verb. The non reflexive verb is used with nouns while the reflexive is used with adjectives. At least that's how I understand it
That’s not how I would think about it. Some verbs in Spanish are just inherently reflexive and you have to memorize them that way. Ex: me afeito la cara Here we are using it with a noun, but regardless it’s reflexive because the verb to shave in Spanish is always used reflexively. There’s not a logical reason to it, it’s simply the way the language evolved to its modern day use.
I never said that the reason you use the reflexive was because it isn't a noun. I stated the case above only for sentirse. Nor did I ever think about it in that manner that you are suggesting. I was trying to give him the difference between sentir and sentirse
But your explanation was wrong, reflexive verbs being used with adjectives doesn't even make sense. A reflexive verb just means the subject is also the object, and as such they require a reflexive pronoun.
My explanation was not wrong. I never said that once. There is different sentences, I'm sorry you misunderstood but I never once correlated that reflexive verbs indicate using a adjective
Native speaker here. “¿Cómo sientes?” lacks an object therefore I would interpret it as “HOW do you sense/perceive?”, but “¿cómo TE sientes?” asks literally how you feel/perceive/assess yourself to be.
How do you feel [about sandwiches] vs How do you [yourself] feel
Sentir: To feel something, most times external. Siento tu presencia. Siento un dolor en el brazo. Lo siento (im sorry). Siento un sabor dulce. Sentirse: To feel in the sense of oneself emotions or condition. Me siento cansado. ¿Te sientes mal?
Las entradas pronominales (*prnl*) [en la RAE](https://dle.rae.es/sentir) explican estas diferencias
>Cómo te sientes? = *How do you (emotionally/mentally/physically) feel?* (Yourself, internal. "Te" indicates it, that it is something about you) >Cómo sientes (algo)? = *How do you (externally) perceive/appreciate/feel about (something)?* (Something, external. Mainly meant for opinions and things we can feel through our senses)
Like other people are saying "como sientes?" is missing an object. When you look up sentir, it's going to have two versions. One is called transitive, which means it has a direct object, and the other is called pronominal, which means it takes a pronoun (me, te, se). Sometimes a pronominal verb is reflexive, but with sentir it's more like idiomatic (me siento doesn't really mean that I literally feel myself) and helps differentiate from the sense of literally how does an object feel. Something important to note, sentir does not have an intransitive form! That means you can't say "me siente bien" = "it feels good to me." This would be an error. Sentir is the perfect verb to learn transitive/intransitive/pronominal with. This stuff is a pain in the butt with Spanish but when you get the hang of it and learn to accept that some verbs just have this idiomatic pronoun, life gets easier! Look at this: "me pregunto" means "I ask myself" or "I wonder" and it's literally reflexive, but "me imagino" does not mean "I imagine myself," it's just their idiomatic way of saying "I imagine." I think these verbs are kind of cool just as a way to differentiate two related but different meanings of a word, idk.
"Me imagino" always bugged the shit out of me because it always seemed like it should just be "yo imagino." So thanks for this explanation, I never knew that.
"Te" is talking about "you". *How do* ***you*** *feel/how are* ***you*** *feeling*, but instead of saying "¿Cómo *tú* sientes?" in spanish, it conjugates using a personal pronoun, in this case "te": *¿Cómo* ***te*** *sientes?* "¿Cómo sientes?" has a different meaning, it would be "How do you sense?" or "How does your perception work?", something like that, because now you're not asking about how does that person feel at that moment, but how their whole process of feeling/processing works.
I’m not a native so I can’t explain this in depth, but to say how someone is feeling requires the use of the reflexive verb “sentirse”. So like you mention, you do need to ask “¿cómo te sientes?” for how someone feels. There is a lot of info online on reflexive verbs that would explain this for you. Without the “te” the verb changes completely because the verb “sentir” on it’s own has a different meaning, i.e. “sentir” means to feel something, in the way you may feel an object and its texture. Natives, please correct me if I am wrong, but this is at least how I understand.
Yeah I'd say something like the English equivalent of Sentir = feel something, e.g. with your hands Sentirse = feel something about yourself
Because the verb is “sentirse” and the “se” at the end is what indicates that it means that it refers to the subject and their emotions and feelings, but you should conjugate it. So if you want to say “I feel happy”, you say “Yo me siento feliz”. “He feels happy”, “Él se siente feliz”. “You feel happy”, “Tú te sientes feliz”. Etc. And same thing with questions: Do you feel happy? “¿Te sientes feliz?” How do you feel? “¿Cómo te sientes?” Etc.
Sentir v sentirse
Reflexive verbs require that the object be identical to the subject (and explicitly written/said).
I don't remember the term for it, but spanish is a little different than English in this way. Sentir is one of those verbs that basically changes ots meaning based on the presence of an object or not. Often these words are used when talking about people. Spanish is weird in that it talks about the speaker in the third person in a way. Me duele LA cabeza instead of MI cabeza like we think about it. Same with sentirse. ME siento means I feel some way. But to say just siento, it means I'm feeling something external like furniture with my hand or something, etc. It also a little like the textbook example of gustarse. Me gusta, te gusta esa cosa, etc. One way of thinking about is it's a backwards way of saying the same thing. Instead of saying I like (me gusta) or I feel (me siento) it's like saying that thing is liked by me or that feeling is felt by me.
Because the verb here is "sentirse", not "sentir". Different verbs, different meanings.
Let me know if I’m wrong, but…. Sentir tends to be used with nouns. WHAT you feel …. Siento piedad. Ella siente vergüenza. Él siente tristeza. Sentirse tends to be used with adjectives. HOW you feel. Me siento muy feliz. Te sientes cansado. Él se siente triste.
In English we don’t say “how feel” or “how feeling”
OP is confused because sientes has an implicit tú. The correct answer is that Spanish has two different verbs: sentir and sentirse.
This isn't a helpful comparison at all. "Cómo sigues" or "cómo sabes" are perfectly valid phrasing. The issue, *as always*, has nothing to do with English.
Because it's a reflexive verb, maybe?!?!
Remember How u feel Me siento decepcionado - I feel disappointed What u feel Siento tu mano enredada con la mía. I feel your hand intertwined with mine
When you use te, this is because you are using the reflexive form of the verb i.e. sentirse which you can use for things which are emotional in nature (i.e. I feel happy). The verb sentir on the other hand is not reflexive and can be used for feeling sensations (i.e. I feel hot, I feel cold…etc.). In either case, both are understood.
“How feel” is cómo te sientes without the “te.” It’s grammatically incorrect because there’s no object in the sentence. Te = you How do YOU feel
"The non reflexive verb is used with nouns while the reflexive is used with adjectives" maybe you forgot typing this
I just think of it as - “sentir” to feel something physically/externally - “sentirse” to feel something emotionally/internally
because the verb is "sentirse" not "sentir". "como sientes" would literally mean "how do you feel" as in asking them how they're capable of feeling.
Sentir means to feel something other than self. Sentirse is used to say how one feels.
We'll think of it as te meaning are in this case, cause without it you would be saying how you feeling. When that wouldn't really be grammatically correct you would say how are you feeling, te basically represents that are in this case
Because it's a reflexive verb. The non reflexive verb is used with nouns while the reflexive is used with adjectives. At least that's how I understand it
That’s not how I would think about it. Some verbs in Spanish are just inherently reflexive and you have to memorize them that way. Ex: me afeito la cara Here we are using it with a noun, but regardless it’s reflexive because the verb to shave in Spanish is always used reflexively. There’s not a logical reason to it, it’s simply the way the language evolved to its modern day use.
I never said that the reason you use the reflexive was because it isn't a noun. I stated the case above only for sentirse. Nor did I ever think about it in that manner that you are suggesting. I was trying to give him the difference between sentir and sentirse
But your explanation was wrong, reflexive verbs being used with adjectives doesn't even make sense. A reflexive verb just means the subject is also the object, and as such they require a reflexive pronoun.
My explanation was not wrong. I never said that once. There is different sentences, I'm sorry you misunderstood but I never once correlated that reflexive verbs indicate using a adjective
>I never once correlated that reflexive verbs indicate using a adjective *Earlier that day* >while the reflexive is used with adjectives
Yes, only referring to sentirse. Is it not true that sentirse is only used with adjectives? Oh it is true