There are few things more confusing for beginning Spanish students, at least those who have English as their first language, than learning the differences between ser and estar. After all, they both mean "to be" in English.
And since both verbs are frequently used, they are as irregular as can be. Who would think that fue would be the third-person preterite of ser? (On the other hand, you've got to have sympathy with those learning English. Who would think "am," "is," "was," and "are" are all forms of "to be"?)
In this lesson, we'll concern ourselves only with the present tense. After all, by the time you're learning other tenses you'll have the two verbs mastered. They really aren't that difficult. What you need to do is remember when learning a foreign language is that we don't translate words from one language to another, we translate meanings. And many of our English verbs, "to be" among them, have a multitude of meanings.
When I think of the differences between ser and estar, I like to think of ser as the passive verb and estar as the active one. (I'm not using the terms in a grammatical sense here.) Ser tells you what something is, the nature of its being, while estar refers more to what something does. I might use soy (the first-person present of ser) to tell you what I am, but I'd use estoy (the first-person present of estar) to tell you what I am being.
Now that's probably as clear as a politician's equivocation, but let me give you a few examples. I might say, "Estoy enfermo." That would tell you that I am being sick, that I am sick at the moment. But it doesn't tell you what I am. Now if I were to say, "Soy enfermo," that would have a different meaning entirely. That would refer to who I am, to the nature of my being. We might translate that as "I am a sick person" or "I am sickly."
Note similar differences in these examples:
•Estoy cansado, I am tired. Soy cansado, I am a tired person.
•Estoy feliz, I'm happy now. Soy feliz, I am happy by nature.
•Está callada, she's being quiet. Es callada, she's introverted.
•No soy listo, I'm not a quick thinker. Estoy listo, I'm ready.
One way of thinking about it is to think of ser as being roughly equivalent to "equals." Another way of thinking about it is that estar often refers to a temporary condition, while ser frequently refers to a permanent condition. But there are some exceptions.
Among the major exceptions to the above way of thinking is that ser is used in expressions of time, such as "Son las dos de la tarde" for "It's 2 p.m." Also, we use estar to indicate someone has died — quite a permanent condition: Está muerto, he is dead.
Along that line, estar is used to indicate location. Estoy en casa, I am at home. But, soy de México, I am from Mexico.
There are also a few idiomatic expressions that simply need to be learned, although that comes naturally with time: La manzana es verde, the apple is green. La manzana está verde, the apple is unripe. Está muy bien la comida, the meal tastes very good.
Note that sometimes estar is modified by an adverb such as bien rather than being followed by an adjective. Estoy bien, I'm fine.
As I mentioned earlier, both ser and estar are irregularly conjugated. Here's a chart of the present tense:
| Ser | Estar | |
| yo tú él, ella, Ud. nosotros vosotros ellos, ellas, Uds.td> | soy eres es somos sois son | estoy estás está estamos estáis están |
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