"Oh, dear!" Leonard look flustered. "Thank you, Krattia--yes, you may go to the bathroom, and you just reminded me of two important verbs I should have added!
Poder and
poner. Well, we'll make that another set before we move on to vocabularly proper."
"Now, for our first set of verbs..."
SER and ESTAR
"First off, the conjugations." He wrote them on the board.
SER: to be
Category 1: Soy
Category 2: Eres
Category 3: Es
Category 4: Somos
Category 5: Son
ESTAR: to be
Category 1: Estoy
Cat 2: Estás
Cat 3: Está
Cat 4: Estámos
Cat 5: Están"Repeat after me!" He tapped each one on the board, calling out the word and beckoning the others to follow him. He put especial emphasis on the pronounciation. Rather than the thick, "rounded off" vowels of English, he left them high and open.
"Now, as you may notice, these two words have the same translation:
To be. However, they are
quite different in their usage.
"To put it as simply as possible:
Ser is for permanent things; estar is for temporary things."
He cleared his throat. "Well, that's really an oversimplification. Some things you use
ser for seem very temporary, and some of the things for
estar... Well, let me just draw up a list."
SER is used for:
--Permanent traits of a thing (color, gender, phystical traits such as "fat" or "tall", what it's made of)
----Yo soy un Bruma gordo (fat). Son manzanas. (He drew a little picture of an apple to clarify the meaning of "manzana.")
--Time of day
----La hora es doce y media. (The time [hour] is twelve and a half.)
--Age (general)
----Somos juvenes. (We are young people.)
ESTAR is used for:
--Feelings and emotions
-----Estoy feliz. (I am happy.)
--Location
----¿Donde está mi camiseta? (Where is my sweater?) Están a la tienda. (We are at the store.)
--Health
----Estámos enfermos. (We're sick.)
--The progressive tenseHe tapped that last one. "That's the next thing we'll be getting to."
"Knowing between the two is fairly important. Some adjectives change their meaning entirely depending on which they're used with! For example,
Estoy aburrido means 'I am bored.'--I hope you're not, by the way. But
Soy aburrido means, 'I am boring!'" He chuckled nervously. "And I
really hope
I'm not!"
Now he was strugging to find board space. He erased one quick bit of writing. "Alright, here's a quick exercise. Just do it in your chairs. Here's a couple example sentences. Now, tell me: Would you use
ser or
estar for each? Don't worry about translating them; just think about the verb!"
1. My Lucain is Striped.
2. He is a funny person.
3. Susie and I are in school.
4. We are sad.
5. What time is it?
6. That Kuhna is only a kit.
7. Where is the train station?
8. I am not well.