SPANISH question: Ser o no estar? (week of 9 July 2007)

To be or not to be? A silly way to say that in Spanish would be: ¿Ser o no estar? As many of you know, and perhaps struggled with this issue, there are two verbs in Spanish for the one English verb TO BE: SER and ESTAR. (This means that there are two ways to say "I am," You are", "He is" etc. etc.) Here are the Spanish conjugations for the present tense:

SER / ESTAR 

YO soy / estoy

TU eres / estás

EL/ELLA es / está

NOSOTROS somos / estamos

ELLOS/USTEDES son / están 

The question of when to use which one is tricky. For example:

Él está enfermo = He is sick (right now, a temporary situation)

Él es enfermo = He is sick (used here as a permanent condition or essential quality, sort of indicating that he has a sick mind...)

One common solution for deciding when to use SER and when to use ESTAR is to consider whether we're talking about a temporary situation or a permanent condition/essential quality, as illustrated above. If temporary, use ESTAR. If permanent or essence, use SER.

This is not a foolproof method, but it helps. Has it worked for you? What other tricks do you use?

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