What kind of a language has two verbs for ‘to be’?! Well, Spanish does, and over at our sister site notesinspanish.com, we have prepared the definitive podcast guide on how to dominate the use of both. For full details and immediate download, click here!
15 Responses to “Serious Spanish Learners: Dominate Ser and Estar!”
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Colin Davies
18 Jun 08 at 9:13 am
And Persian [Farsi]
hellothere
18 Jun 08 at 9:41 am
Not to mention that they have two verbs for… “to have”.
Good luck to all the Spanish learners!
ernesto
18 Jun 08 at 2:56 pm
Actually there is only one word for ‘to be’, and it is ser. It is not the case that there are two words for the same but in Spanish you cannot use ser/to be like it used in other languages. It’s a matter of Latin syntax.
We can say a ‘green car’ or ‘the car is green’, this is the real ser/to be. But in case of estar it is always something like ‘is located’, ‘is just’, ‘is at the moment’ type of is that cannot stand alone but needs an adverb, hence estar gives some sort of adverbial connotation to a noun.
Think about about it for a while and you will get a better understanding.
luke
18 Jun 08 at 3:23 pm
I haven’t looked into this but isn’t ‘estar’ derived from the Italian ‘stare’ meaning ‘to stay’?
carlos
18 Jun 08 at 9:02 pm
Both spanish and italian derive from Latin language, spanish is not derived from italian.
luke
18 Jun 08 at 10:27 pm
@Carlos
Ok, I should have said the Latin ‘stare’ which means ‘to stand’. ‘Stare’ in modern Italian means ‘to stay’. ‘Stay’ in modern English comes from the Latin. And I’m presuming that ‘estar’ has the same Latin roots as the Italian word ‘stare’.
I studied Latin for years at school but I thought you’d know what I meant. Of course Italy only became a country in the 19th century.
Bill
18 Jun 08 at 11:57 pm
@ernesto – while I agree that ser & estar are not two words for the same thing in the sense that they cannot be used interchangeably, I think it is misleading to say that “ser” is the real word for “to be”. This makes little sense to me, since in English the verb “to be” is used to describe the temporary state of something (estar) as well as the more permanent characteristics of something (ser). You can’t say that one is more real a representation of the the verb “to be” than the other since it depends on the context in which the verb “to be” is being used.
leftbanker
19 Jun 08 at 12:26 am
I admire your ambition in attempting to nail down the different connotations of these two Spanish verbs, but I think it would be easier to define the meaning of human existence, or the difference between love and lust. I have come across some rather confusing examples (at least in literature).
Jonk
19 Jun 08 at 5:56 am
Thanks for this Ben. I have found that when you tackle subjects like this you guys do a really good job of making things clear.
ernesto
19 Jun 08 at 8:06 am
@Bill – the word ‘ser’ like the word ‘to be’ is solely auxiliary and cannot be used on its own. We cannot really say ‘he is’ or ‘es’ as a logical self contained sentence. However ‘está’ or ‘he is there’ is possible. Estar is -as luke mentioned- a form of ‘stay’ or ‘stand’ as a true verb on its own. For what I know they have dropped the ‘estar’ as auxiliary verb in Portuguese and only use ‘ser’, so probably in most European languages it is a simplification that came in their evolution.
There are many more ‘two for one’ cases. For example:
para and por, in this case neither is one is ‘for’ as in English
saber and conocer, in this case ‘saber’ matches ‘to know’ because ‘to know’ is a root that also exists in Danish or German but can only be used sinilar to ‘saber’ in Spanish
‘en’ versus ‘in’ and ‘on’, in this case there is only one Spanish preposition for two in English, German or Danish. I would say en = in but I won’t bet on it.
So anywhere, this is a fundamental problem in language learning, especially with languages that do not match closely. I believe it would help students to focus on these issues more deeply because it can help to master the difficulties of language learning better. Especially when they start learning their first foreign language it is something very strange.
leftbanker
19 Jun 08 at 11:09 am
Arabic doesn’t have a verb for “to be.” Perhaps Spanish could lend them “ser” or “estar” and make things a lot easier for students of the language.
Jonk
20 Jun 08 at 1:27 pm
@ Leftbanker. How do they survive without it?
phil walker
20 Jun 08 at 1:48 pm
The most interesting and useful bit for me was the fact that you always use estar for where are places – I’ve always struggled with this one because it doesn’t really make any sense. If you’re at a restaurant and ask where the toilets are, you’d expect that where they are is a permanent characteristic and so you should use ser, you wouldn’t expect them to say they were over there yesterday, but today they’re up there and tomorrow they’ll be over there again!
Also interesting is that tonto means stupid/dimwitted – do you reckon that that old tv series was the Lone Ranger and Stupid? Given a lot of westerns were made in Mexico and how racist people were to the Indians at the time – sort of a tv producers joke???
Ben
20 Jun 08 at 2:29 pm
Phil, I think you are right about Tonto! And yes, estar for location, unless, perversely, it is a temporary event like a meeting, then you use Ser!
mateo
22 Jun 08 at 12:47 am
The difference between saber/conocer also exists in other langages as well:
French savior/connaí®tre
Italian sapere/conoscere
German kennen/wissen
Gaelic tá fhios agam/tá eolas agam
And at least, spanish only uses one verb to form the past or compund tenses, haber, as opposed to two in other languages (Italian: essere/avere, German: sind/haben, etc.)
Also, I’ve found that prepositions are used almost at random in different romance languages.