Word Order

1. Which is correct, and why:
2.  

• Qué quiere hacer usted? OR Qué quiere usted hacer?

¡Hola Neil-wzad!

Great question! As a starting point, it is worth noting that word order in Spanish is more flexible than word order in English. However, we still retain the same basic sentence order, which is subject + verb + object (SVO). For example, Amy comió un plátano, “Amy ate a banana.”

Remember that Spanish is a pronoun-dropping language, so in most Spanish sentences you see and hear, there may not be a subject pronoun unless it forms a key part of the grammatical structure, like in a comparative or adds emphasis or clarity. Namely, the sentence Yo tengo un bolígrafo, “I have a pen,” does not require the subject pronoun yo (I) to make sense because the verb is conjugated in the yo form and, therefore, gives us this information. 

Although the examples you have given don’t necessarily conform to the SVO sentence order, this does not make them incorrect; it simply emphasises a different bit of the sentence. As such both Qué quiere hacer usted? and Qué quiere usted hacer? are correct and can both be translated as “What do you (formal) want to do?”

In English, sentence order is a bit more rigid, so we rely on intonation for emphasis; for example, “What do YOU want to do?” would be said with a different intonation to “What do you want to DO?” However, in Spanish we can create this emphasis by placing the subject pronoun in a different position. Namely, in the sentence Qué quiere hacer usted? The emphasis is on usted.

There is an example of this in lesson 2.1 Taking a Tour, where Amy says ¿Cómo está usted? “How are you?”

I hope this is helpful! 

¡Saludos!

Indy