Lesson 29: 'To be' - Ser or Estar?

Why Spanish has two ways to say 'to be' - Ser and Estar - and when and where you use them.

Now this is one of those times when we can look at something in a Language and think "Oh, no! Something new which I will have to remember!"

... or ... if you give it some thought you will soon see that having to forms of 'to be' actually gives a language something more and is quite philosophical.

So let's just get those differences out the way:

• 'Estar' - to express a state you are in (e.g. tired, at a location, etc.)
• 'Ser' - to express a characteristic about you (e.g. a bad person, a teacher, etc.)

Now watch out, some Spanish courses refer to these as "temporary" and "permenant", but if you try to learn it this way you will come unstuck in the end because of the number of times it doesn't add up or make sense. So think STATE or CHARACTERISTIC?

For example when you say your profession - "I am a teacher" - this is not a state you are in even though it may be temporary. It is a characteristic of who you are.

We can remember that 'Ser' is the characteristic because:

Spanish	English
Un ser	A being
Un ser humano	A human being

So if we just think about "human being" we'll remember 'ser' and that this is about characteristics - things which are true over the long term.

Incidently 'humano' is a word we could have tracked down by following the rules from an earlier lesson. We have the word "humanity" in English and we know that English words that end "ity" can be changed to 'idad' to get the Spanish word.

Spanish	English
Humanidad	Humanity

From there guessing that "Human" is 'humano' is not a great leap. Again these methods don't always work but if you have nothing else to go on they are a great fall back and do give you what you need most of the time!

Estar

Let's start with the "to be" verb we use to express a state - 'Estar'.

This is quite an easy one to remember when we get to know it because it looks sort of similar to "State" ... and that is because it is, it does have the same roots.

One thing to notice is that 'e' on the front and you will find this popping up all over in Spanish. Spanish doesn't like words that start with 's' and then a consonant (like, 't', 'p', etc.) so it adds an 'e' to the beginning.

Spanish	English
Español	Spanish
España	Spain
Estudiante	Student
Especial	Special
Espacial	Spacial
Estricto	Strict
Espectacular	Spectacular

Now this isn't a list for you to memorise, but just pointing out that if you think a word in Spanish starts 'sp' or 'st' remember to think again about this rule and add an 'e' first.

So let's look at how it gets formed.

Spanish	English
Estoy	I am

It's irregular because normally as an 'ar' verb we would expect to get 'esto'.

We'll pause here for a second because I have some good news. There are only 4 verbs in Spanish where the 'I' form ends in 'oy' and now we have covered them all.

• 'voy' - I go
• 'doy' - I give
• 'estoy' - I am (state)
• 'soy' - I am (characteristic)

Hoorah!

Something else that stands out about 'Estar' is that this is the only present tense verb which does not have the accent on the penultimate syllable - the accent is on the last syllable.

All of the other forms of 'Estar' follow the rules for 'ar' verbs to get the endings so you can work them out before you scroll further down!

Spanish	English
Está	He/she/it is
Están	They/you guys are
Estamos	We are
Estás	You (informal) are

A couple of takeaways from this:

• You can see the accents on the 'a's which in Spanish tells us to put the accent there and so it is a reminder that this is the only present tense verb which does this.
• There is no accent in the "we" form because the penultimate syllable is the natural place for the accent to be so no accent on the 'a' is needed

So lets see this with states that we are in

Spanish	English
Estamos Cansados	We are tired

But don't forget that 'cansados' is an adjective - a word that describes something so:

• For a single male - 'cansado'
• For a single female - 'cansada'
• For a mixed group or male group - 'cansados'
• For an all female group - 'cansadas'

Again just checking out here once more how 'a' is so often associated with feminine and 'o' with masculine ... and that adjectives get pluralized in Spanish when we talk about more than one person or thing.

As we go forward I won't point out the endings as the text would just get to busy but have a look at the written form each time and work out if it is masculine, feminine and/or plural.

Siempre - always

We said 'Estar' represented states a person might be in but what if they claim to always be in that state? To always be "tired"? Well Spanish still treats it as a state.

Spanish	English
Siempre estoy cansada	I'm always tired
Estoy cansada siempre	I'm always tired
Estoy siempre cansada	I'm always tired

Yes! - 'Siempre can go pretty much anywhere as is almost the case in English - "Always I'm tired"/"I'm always tired". Its easiest in terms of speaking to just follow the common English format "I'm always tired" but don't be surprised to see or here Siempre popping up in different places in a sentence than you might expect.

Is being dead a characteristic or a state?

Being dead is a state because it wasn't always so - and you can remember that nugget by the phrase "He was lying in state" as in he was lying in a state of death.

Spanish	English
Estoy muerto	I am dead

Which also, like in English, can be used to say "I'm very tired".

Lesson 30: Using 'estar' in all sorts of ways