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Vocabulary:

cómo = how

está = you are (formal)

estás = you are (familiar)

TRANSCRIPT: 

Hola, mi amigo. Hola, mi amiga. Welcome back. ¿Cómo está?

¿Cómo está? Hello, my friend. How are you? ¿Cómo está?

Well, mi amigo, ¿Cómo está? or ¿Cómo estás? and I'll tell you the difference in a minute, is something you're going to be using a lot as you come across people. ¿Cómo está?

¿Cómo estás? means How are you? How are you? Let me break it down just a little bit.

Now the visual I can give you is, and again my memory hooks will work for some people and not for others. Let's say that Howard has a comb-over. Kay Howard has a comb-over. How is comb-over?

¿Cómo? ¿Cómo? How? ¿Cómo?

¿Cómo está? ¿Cómo está? is how are you. Now, let's talk about está.

Está comes from a verb, and don't worry about this yet, but it comes from a verb estar, which means to be. Now, it might help you if you think of an estate, está. That's the beginning of estate. A state.

A state of being. This isn't so much a memory hook as the true background to this word. Esta comes from the word state meaning state of being. What is your state?

What's your state of being? How are you? Now, está, for those of us who like to know the spelling, is spelled E-S-T-A. And there's a little accent mark over the A.

That indicates that we're going to give that part of the word some stress. É-STÁ. Notice how está is a little bit stronger than é. Está.

How are you? How are you? How are you? It's very similar, right?

Very similar to está, but it has an S on the end. So what the heck is that, you might be asking? What is that S doing on the end? And when would I say está and when would I say estás?

So here's what you need to know. Spanish uses a more formal version of some language and a less formal or more familiar version of language. depending on who you're talking to. When you say, ¿Cómo está?

without the S on the end, you're usually talking to somebody who has a little bit of, let's say, status somehow. It could be somebody who's older and you want to be polite. It could be a teacher, a doctor, maybe even a lawyer. It just depends.

¿Cómo está? would be used more for people that you don't know very well. It's a little bit more polite. ¿Cómo estás?

¿Cómo estás? How are you? How are you? How are you?

But most people in the street say to me, ¿Cómo estás? So again, how do you say how in Spanish? ¿Cómo? ¿Cómo?

And how do you say are you or what is your state of being if you are being polite? That would be, ¿Estás? ¿Estás? How are you?

How are you? Okay, wonderful. You've just added some more words. Please practice these today.

You can go around your house and talk to your plants. Say, hola, como esta? Como estas? Depending on whether you want to show them respect or you consider them friends.

How are you? Como estas? And please write this down in your Spanish journal. See you later amigo, amiga.