Ser – Estar

These are two of the most important verbs in Spanish so you should try to master as soon as possible. And it is not easy since you are going to have two main problems: understanding the meaning and conjugate them. Let´s see them

Frist it is indispensable understanding the difference between them. Let´s see an example in English:

               The book is red

               The book is broken

If we pay attention the first example what we are trying to say is that the book has a distinctive quality which is being red, an essential characteristic. In the second one what we mean is the book is broken right now, it is a specific condition right now but maybe it was not broken 2 years ago.

I know it can be difficult to understand but it is essential to use these two verbs correctly because the meaning of a sentence may change so drastically depending on the verb used. Let´s see an Spanish example:

Luis es estúpido

Luis está estúpido

The difference between them is that in the first sentence, the one we are using “es”, what we mean is we don´t get well with Luis and because of that we think he is an stupid. In the second example, the one we are using “estar”, we mean that today Luis is acting as an stupid, maybe he has a bad day, problems to deal with an so on and because of that he is being rude, but it doesn´t mean that you don´t get well with him and maybe tomorrow Luis will be better and friendly.

And now the second problem, learning how to conjugate these two verbs. Unfortunately there isn´t any rule for these two verbs as they are irregulars verbs, so you´ll have to memorise them.

Let´s see how they do. I´ll show you the complete conjugation although I know that you won´t probably know how to use correctly and some tenses are not even common in spoken Spanish, but I think it is better if I show you them all at once:

Estar - cuadro Ser - cuadro

Ok, here they are, now it´s time to study. Notice that the verb “estar” is regular on most of its forms and even “ser” follows a pattern.

See you on the next lesson!

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