Idiomatic expressions using essere and avere
I am new to Italian and yesterday my teacher covered these idiomatic expressions saying that avere was used if the word was a verb, and essere if it was an adjective. I have been trying to categorize them and am really struggling as to my mind the words in the different groups are pretty indistinguishable and none are verbs ie they are not 'doing' words.
sono in ritardo / ho fretta
sono felice / ho caldo
sono contenta / ho paura
sono annoiata / ho sete
sono stanca / ho sonno
sono triste / ho fame
So essere is used for being late, happy, bored, tired and sad while avere is used for tired, cold, in a hurry, afraid, thirsty, and hungry.
As some of these are pretty much the same (being late and being in a hurry/ being tired and being tired) Is there actually a rule or is this something that I just have to learn by rote?

Question

Idiomatic expressions using essere and avere
I am new to Italian and yesterday my teacher covered these idiomatic expressions saying that avere was used if the word was a verb, and essere if it was an adjective. I have been trying to categorize them and am really struggling as to my mind the words in the different groups are pretty indistinguishable and none are verbs ie they are not 'doing' words. 
sono in ritardo  /   ho fretta
sono felice        /    ho caldo 
sono contenta  /    ho paura
sono annoiata  /    ho sete
sono stanca     /     ho sonno
sono triste        /     ho fame
So essere is used for being late, happy, bored, tired and sad while  avere is used for tired, cold, in a hurry, afraid, thirsty, and hungry. 
As some of these are pretty much the same (being late and being in a hurry/ being tired and being tired) Is there actually a rule or is this something that I just have to learn by rote?

Answer

Essere is used with adjectives (stanco =tired, affamato = hungry) whereas Avere is used with nouns (fame = hunger, sete =thirst, Paura = fear).
I'm afraid English has different structures, so I would recommend you to learn to distinguish adjectives from nouns without relying on English.

Answer

Hi

I don't know if it helps, but I think it's important to remember that verbs can be 'states' as well as 'doing' words. So the adjectives describe what you feel and the verbs how you are (I think). Having said that I can't tell you if I learnt a rule or just by rote - the latter I think.

But I did also start to think of things differently. for example "paura" isn't really "afraid" in English - it's "fear" - and for some reason once I started to think of that then it was much more obvious to construct a sentence "I have fear." It's something you have not something you are.

And then I started to think okay, so in Italian we construct sentences in this way - and "Ho fame" etc became much easier.

Hopefully you'll get a more comprehensive answer from someone who is a bit more certain about the answer!

Chris

Answer

PS they no idiomatic, idioms is "essere a cavallo" to be on horse - you're fine, this affair will go well

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