ENGLISH → MEXICAN SPANISH

What’s going on?

¿Qué está pasando?

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MEANING & CONTEXT

The words, and when to use them

“¿Qué está pasando?” means “What’s going on?” in Mexican Spanish. Asks what is happening right now.

Register: Neutral. Gender form: neutral.

Every classification is a doorway

Follow any value to discover phrases that share it.

Topics

Find phrases for everyday situations and conversations. A phrase can belong to several topics.

Keeping a Conversation Going Conversation

Difficulty

Poquito’s learning difficulty bands reflect length, vocabulary, grammar and idiom. These are editorial estimates, not CEFR levels.

Easy

Filters

Usefulness

Essential, High and Normal describe the practical value of learning a phrase. Usefulness is independent of difficulty.

High

Conversation builder

Expressions marked as helpful for opening or extending a conversation.

Yes

Situation specific

Separate broadly reusable expressions from phrases tied to particular situations.

Your favorites and memorization

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Memorization uses your latest English-first rating.

Why this difficulty rating?

Length 6 points: 3 spoken words; gender alternatives count once.
Vocabulary 3 points: Editorial vocabulary load, using a basic-word list and frequency within this deck.
Grammar 10 points: Question pattern and conjugated verb.
Idiom 0 points: Meaning is largely direct.
Reuse -2 points: 1 content-word families appear in at least four cards; familiarity reduces the score.

Keep the conversation going

Explore related topic →

Are you kidding?¿Estás bromeando?
“¿Estás bromeando?” means “Are you kidding?” in Mexican Spanish. This expression belongs to Conversation. Ask a question.
BeginnerNormalEnglish first →Spanish first →
Are you ready?¿Estás listo / lista?
“¿Estás listo / lista?” means “Are you ready?” in Mexican Spanish. Use listo for a man and lista for a woman. Match the person you are addressing.
BeginnerHighEnglish first →Spanish first →
I’m kidding.Estoy bromeando.
“Estoy bromeando.” means “I’m kidding.” in Mexican Spanish. This expression belongs to Conversation. Share personal information.
BeginnerNormalEnglish first →Spanish first →
What are you doing?¿Qué estás haciendo?
“¿Qué estás haciendo?” means “What are you doing?” in Mexican Spanish. This expression belongs to Conversation. Ask a question.
EasyHighEnglish first →Spanish first →
What are you looking for?¿Qué estás buscando?
“¿Qué estás buscando?” means “What are you looking for?” in Mexican Spanish. This expression belongs to Conversation. Ask a question.
EasyHighEnglish first →Spanish first →
How are you?¿Cómo estás?
“¿Cómo estás?” means “How are you?” in Mexican Spanish. Informal, addressing one person.
BeginnerEssentialEnglish first →Spanish first →

Technical Specs

Formality and register

How a phrase addresses someone: Neutral, Familiar (tú), or Formal (usted). Politeness also depends on wording and context; tú can be polite.

Neutral

Conversation role

What the phrase does in a conversation. A phrase can have several standardized roles, such as asking, answering or sharing information.

Ask a question

Situations

The specific setting recorded by the editorial review. Not every phrase has a named situation.

Not recorded

Gender forms

Explore the grammatical gender forms recorded for each phrase. Grammatical gender is different from the speaker’s identity.

neutral

Who or what gender refers to

Find whether gender wording relates to the speaker, listener, noun or object.

Not recorded

Learning collections

The fixed introductory collection and editorial Core or Expansion placements.

Not recorded

Vocabulary families

Browse recorded word families shared by phrases. These editorial family labels may not be dictionary headwords.

estar pasando

Vocabulary familiarity

Everyday, less common and specialized vocabulary, considered separately from grammatical difficulty.

Not recorded

Reusability

Editorial score for how broadly an expression can be reused; higher scores indicate more reuse.

Coverage gap value

Editorial estimate of how much the phrase adds to the collection’s practical coverage.

Ambiguity risk

Editorial score for how strongly meaning can depend on context; higher values indicate more ambiguity.

Confusion risk

Editorial estimate of the chance of confusing the expression with another; higher values indicate more risk.

Spanish word count

Explore shorter and longer expressions using the recorded Spanish word count.

1–3

Usefulness score

The detailed editorial usefulness score, distinct from the three usefulness labels.

Difficulty score

Scores run from 5 to 100. These ten-point ranges show the finer distribution within difficulty bands.

21–30

Vocabulary contribution

Recorded number of vocabulary-family contributions; it is not a learner’s vocabulary size.

1–3

Review dates

When the recorded editorial review was performed.

2026-10-10

Editorial quality

Recorded review status and quality classification.

Reviewed for Spanish (Mexico)

Source batches

Editorial import batches where source information is recorded.

Not recorded

Review methods

How the recorded editorial ratings were assigned. These are assessments rather than measured learning outcomes.

Editorial rules: templates, topic/role density, context dependence, and same-topic word-family overlap

Difficulty rubric versions

The version of the editorial difficulty rubric used for a phrase.

Introductory speakers

The speaker roles recorded for the fixed introductory dialogue.

Not recorded

Length difficulty factor