Difference Between BIEN, BUENO and BUEN in Spanish

La Diferencia entre BIEN, BUENO y BUEN en español

¡Hola! It’s Brenda Romaniello here, your Spanish teacher from Hola Spanish. Today I have a highly requested topic to share with you, and that is the difference between ‘bueno’ and ‘buen’ and then ‘bueno’ and ‘bien’.

This topic can be confusing for some students who are learning Spanish because it isn’t always clear what the different is between them. We’ll explore their grammatical differences and meaning, and then I’ll show you some examples so you can understand it better.

BIEN

Grammatically speaking, ‘Bien’ is an adverb, which means it can modify the following a verb, an adjective and another adverb. When it modifies a verb it means ‘well’, and when it modifies an adjective or adverb it also means ‘very’.

Structure #1: ‘Bien’ + a Verb

¡Bien hecho! (Well done!)
Estoy bien (I’m well)
María trabaja bien (Maria works well)
Pedro y Juan se llevan muy bien (Pedro and Juan get along very well)

Structure #2: ‘Bien’ + an Adjective

El té está bien caliente (The tea is very hot)
Ese vestido te queda bien bonito (That dress looks so good on you)
¡Cuidado! El jefe está bien enojado hoy (Be careful! The boss is very angry today)

Structure #3: ‘Bien’ + an Adverb

La casa está bien lejos (The house is very far)
La mermelada está bien arriba en la nevera (The jam is very high inside the fridge)
El florero se cayó bien lentamente antes de romperse en mil pedazos (The vase felt very slowly before breaking into a thousand pieces)

BUENO

The meaning of ‘bueno’ is ‘good’ and grammatically speaking it’s an adjective, which means that its function in the sentence is to modify a noun. Remember that nouns in Spanish have a gender, they can be either feminine or masculine. As adjectives modify nouns they must match the noun it modifies both in gender as well as in number, that is to say, singular and plural. For example, if a noun is masculine and singular, such as ‘el libro’ (the book), then the adjective must change to match it to be masculine and singular as well, in this case ‘el libro rojo’ (the red book). If the noun is feminine, for example, ‘la puerta’ (the door), then we have to say ‘la puerta roja’ (the red door).

As ‘bueno’ is an adjective, we’ll have 4 forms or options which will be used depending on the gender and number of the noun it modifies:

Bueno
Buen
Buena
Buenos
Buenas

For example:
Ana es una buena amiga (Ana is a good friend)
Juan es un perro muy bueno (Juan is a very good dog)
Julián y Sara son buenos estudiantes (Julian and Sara are good students)

 

‘BUENA AMIGA’ or ‘AMIGA BUENA’?

As you can see, we’ve used ‘bueno’ and it’s different forms before and after the nouns they’re modifying. So the questions we get asked a lot is: Which one is correct? The answer: both. Both options are correct. Generally speaking, descriptive adjectives in Spanish will go after the noun, such as our previous example, we said ‘el libro rojo’. We can, however, put them before the noun for emphasis, that is to say, to make it stand out. Basically you can place adjectives before a noun to make it more emphatic, but overusing this should be avoided as it can become irritating and sound unnatural to put emphasis in every single noun you mention.

BUENO VS BUEN

Finally, we come to compere these two. ‘Bueno’ is the masculine singular form of the adjective and as we said before, when we want to be more emphatic, we can place ‘bueno’ before a noun that is masculine and singular. However, if ‘bueno’ goes before a noun, we need to remove the ‘o’ at the end of ‘bueno’ and say ‘buen’, followed by the masculine singular noun we want to modify. In contrast if we want to say ‘bueno’ after the noun, then we have to say ‘bueno’ and not ‘buen’.

Have a close look to these examples:
Este es un buen coche (this is a good car)
Este es un coche bueno (this is a good car)

What’s the difference?

As we have to use ‘buen’ before a masculine singular noun and ‘bueno’ after, ‘buen’ is, therefore, more emphatic. That’s the only difference. You can use either, simply remember to remove the ‘o’ if you’re going to place it before whatever you’d like to describe that is singular and masculine.

It’s incorrect to say ‘este es un bueno coche’

Some Common Expression with BUEN

We use it specifically for greetings, salutations, good wishes, etc because we usually want to be more emphatic with our message in these particular occasions.

¡Buen viaje! (Have a nice trip!)
¡Buen día! (Have a nice morning/good morning!)
¡Buen fin de semana! (Have a nice weekend)
¡Buen provecho! (Bon appetite/enjoy your meal)

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