When to use “ser” or “estar” is a traditional problem for learners of Spanish whose native languages have only one verb in this corner of the Lexicon (e.g., English, French, Italian, German…), and it has been discussed hundreds of times in italki and elsewhere, but, as learners continue to ask frequently, it has seemed to me that discussing it once more would do no harm. Needless to say, I do not pretend to add anything original to previous treatments of the matter.
Simplifying a bit at first, "ser" supports 'permanent' (rather: relatively long-lasting) properties of its subject, whereas "estar" supports temporary ones, i.e., "estar" is used to describe states of affairs that hold only for a limited period of time. So, we say "Es americano/alto/rubio/rico/…" and not "*Está americano/alto/rubio/rico/…", and it is always anomalous (pleonastic) to say "*Es permanentemente/siempre americano/alto/rubio/rico/…". On the contrary, we naturally say of a male human being "Está cansado/triste/ borracho/deprimido/..." and not "*Es cansado/triste/borracho/enfermo/deprimido/...", and it is by no means pleonastic, but quite appropriate, to say "Estoy cansado/triste/borracho/alegre/deprimido/..." and add time boundaries like "hoy/permanentemente/casi siempre/por las mañanas/...", etc.
Intuitively speaking, the explanation seems rather obvious: if somebody is American, tall, rich, etc., they are perceived as “permanently American” (tall, rich, fair-haired...), but, unless something pathological is going on, one is not permanently tired, sad, drunk, depressed, or ill, and therefore it is very relevant to specify when such states hold, e.g., just today, every day, in the evenings, or permanently, of course.
So, the basic rule is “use "ser" if the following predicate names a permanent property, and use "estar" if it names a temporary one, i.e., if the property is logically reversible and may cease to hold of the subject.
Unfortunately, though, the permanence and transience of properties are gauged relative to participants and situations naturally associated with intervals of time that vary considerably in length. Hence, in many cases "ser" also supports properties that are not absolutely permanent, but only long-lasting enough, i.e. in practice, permanent within the natural time limits of the type of situation involved. For example, since somebody’s nationality can change within their life, "Ahora soy americano, pero antes era cubano, y pronto seré canadiense" is not incoherent at all. Similarly, tallness is basically a permanent property, but it is relative to circumstances like the average size of the individuals used as a reference point (e.g., teenagers, old-age pensioners, Spaniards of the 1950’s, Spaniards of the 1990’s, etc.). Hence, “Ahora ya no soy alto, pero en mi juventud lo fui” is perfectly coherent if e.g., the new generations are much taller than the older ones. Correspondingly, "alto" may be preceded by "estar" as well as "ser": we can say both "El niño es alto
para su edad" y "El niño está alto
para su edad", but note that "El niño está alto", with or without the hedge "para su edad", does not entail that the boy is tall, only that he is taller than average or taller than expected at his age.
Conversely, sometimes "estar" supports a permanent enough property. Perhaps the clearest case in point is when we say "Está muerto", and not "*Es muerto". Isn’t that a flagrant exception to the above rule? Why do we use "estar", then, as if the property “muerto” corresponded to a temporary, reversible, state of affairs? Is this a consequence of the religious beliefs traditionally prevalent in Spain?
It must be recalled at this point, however, that “reversibility” applies on the logical dimension, and not only on the historical (linear time) one. What is relevant to “temporariness” in this context is not only that a state of affairs may have an end, but also that it should have had a beginning, i.e., in general, that it necessarily have a time boundary, but the boundary may also be in the past, i.e., it may be a beginning as well as an end.
Looked at from this angle, in the case of the minimal pair “Está muerto” vs. “*Es muerto” the exception is only apparent: the property “muerto” IS temporary (even if you do not believe in the afterlife), if the time dimension is computed in its two senses, backwards, as well as forwards; if it were not, the deceased would never even have existed! If somebody is dead now, he must have been alive at some previous interval of time, so "muerto" is a temporary property bounded by its opposite "vivo", an obviously temporary property. Observe that Spanish "*Está permanentemente/siempre muerto" is as incoherent as "*Está permanentemente/siempre vivo", whereas "Está siempre/permanentemente cansado/borracho" etc., are not. The same holds in English: you cannot say "*He's always dead/alive" either (unless “dead” and “alive” metaphorically mean something else, e.g., insensitive, out of touch, and the converse, respectively). In sum: even the property “muerto” is reversible from a logical point of view, hence temporary, and so, in spite of appearances, there is nothing exceptional in the fact that it be introduced by "estar", rather than "ser".
What complicates matters for the foreign learner is that both "estar" and "ser" can occur before what seems to be the same property. To give you an easy example, "guapa" (= handsome, pretty) is basically a permanent property, obviously with the qualification made above with respect to “alto”: a woman may be “guapa” in her own temporal or geographical environment (e.g., the 1950’s, Turkey) and not in some other milieu, (e.g., the 2000’s, Sweden). Hence, you may well find expressions like “Mi madre era guapa para su época”, o “Es guapa para ser española”, as well as simply "Mi madre era guapa". In absolute terms, “guapa” is treated as a permanent property, and we say "Ana es guapa" instead of "Ana está guapa", but the latter is also correct Spanish, only with a subtle difference in meaning. As soon as time limits are specified or implied, we can say without incoherence "
Hoy Ana está guapa" or "¡Qué guapa está Ana hoy!", but then it is no longer possible to say *Ana es guapa hoy” nor *¡Qué guapa es Ana hoy". The reason is that by adding a temporal modifier that delimits the interval at which the property is proposed as holding we convert the permanent property “guapa” into a different (= transitory) one. In other words, the meaning of "guapa" changes depending on whether it is preceded by "ser" or "estar": "Hoy Ana está guapa" or “Últimamente Ana está guapa” do NOT entail “Ana es guapa”, nor viceversa. All they claim is that today or of late she looks more attractive than usual (e.g., because she is better dressed, better made up, does her hair in a more becoming way, her eyes shine more, or whatever). No wonder, then, that it is perfectly coherent to say “Ana es y está guapa”. Such conjunctions are neither pleonastic, nor contradictory, because we are talking about TWO different properties, and as a matter of fact, we can contrast them, as in “Ana, no es que 'esté' guapa, es que 'es' guapa”.
This is by no means an exceptional case, on the contrary, it happens all the time. To cite just one more example, consider the property "nuevo" in the minimal pair "Este coche es nuevo" vs. "Este coche está nuevo". In the former, "nuevo" roughly means just come from the car factory, whereas in the latter it means "not new, but so well kept and in such good condition that it might pass as new". Accordingly, "Este coche no es nuevo, pero está nuevo" is not contradictory and "Este coche está nuevo porque es nuevo" is not a tautology. Both are absolutely coherent, as expected under the assumption that two different senses of "nuevo" are at play here.
Needless to say, this barely scratches the surface. As you can guess, the use of "ser" and "estar" is inevitably entangled with deep metaphysical issues like identity, the individuation of states and events, existence, possibility, the nature of time, etc., but I hope the rules of thumb and the examples above, as well as those in
http://www.italki.com/knowledge/page/Ser%20vs%20Estar%20Ejemplos%20representativos.htm, will suffice to help you choose correctly in most cases.
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Spanish | Category
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Aug 16, 2011 23:08 | Views
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