Are you tired?

Verbs 7 comments

Are you tired of not understanding the difference between SER and ESTAR in Spanish grammar?

For many people this particular grammar point can lead to a bit of confusion.  But trust me…it’s not that bad!

I really hope that I will be able to clarify to some extent when Spanish people use Ser and Estar, and how they come to choose!

 

In my last post To Be or not To Be… I explained about the difference between SER and ESTAR with examples using the First person singular: i.e. “I am”

These following examples are using the verb ESTAR, because , as we saw in the last post, these sentences are describing a state of a person or a thing, that is a TEMPORARY state, not an inherent characteristic.

The verb we are using this time is ESTAR = TO BE.

(For more information on ‘SER = TO BE’ , To Be or not To Be………… in Spanish

 Estás cansada          You’re tired

Estás enfadada      You’re angry

Estás tranquila        You’re calm

Estás casada            You’re married

Estás divorciada      You’re  divorced

Estás interesada      You’re interested

Estás aburrida          You’re bored

Estás ocupada           You’re busy

Estás enferma          You’re ill

Please note I am using the FEMININE form of the adjective at the moment. This means I am assuming in these cases that the speaker is female. More on masculine adjectives later. They will just have to be patient.

Please, please tell me you can see a pattern emerging!

More next time…

7 comments

  1. Pingback: ¿Estáis bien? Are you (guys) Okay? – A simple life put in simple language
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  3. Oh Oh ! So the virgin Mary in you esta as vezes borracha and naughty Ryan the mad Irish siempre es borracho ?
    I wandered through Eire in 1984 in this present life, and I guess it changed a lot in the direction I loathe, like France . I was “lucky” enough, due to a car crash, to attend the festival called the Rose of Tralee . By then I really thought I could feel the genuine Ireland, and I loved everything I witnessed . . .

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  4. Oui je suis versé en français parce que je suis Français, from the south-west, the huge forest along the Atlantic . And I’m veeery fond of Irish folks . BTW, estando borracho is just the standard for Irish, or am I wrong ?

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  5. Hello Ms Connolly . Nicely sounds like an Irish name this . My favourite trick with “estar” and “ser” occurs with the adjective “listo/lista” . This one means ready or smart, and it entirely depends on the verb . “Esta lista” means she is ready while “es lista” means she is smart . Isn’it wonderful, and so original for I don’t know other languages than Spanish and Portuguese with two verbs to be . Surely we can dive deeply into national psychology and also philosophy, why not, from that duality .

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    1. Hi phildange,
      yeah, just a bit Irish! You yourself, Sir?
      Teaching ‘Ser’ vs ‘Estar’ in a bar last night while drinking copious copas de tinto de la Rioja:

      ‘Ser borracha’ or ‘Estar borracha’.
      I think my student got the message!
      You seem well-versed in French too?

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