The Spanish verbs estar and ser both translate into English as “to be.” So what’s an English-speaker to do? I’ve found that sometimes I get it right because my ear remembers a particular usage, sometimes I get it right because there are guiding principles, and sometimes I get it wrong.
A Mexican friend of mine told me that she thinks getting estar and ser right is the hardest thing for non-native speakers learning Spanish. She gave as an example an Italian friend of hers who spoke perfect Spanish EXCEPT for mistakes confusing these two verbs. (Italian is extremely close to Spanish… I can get the drift of Italian movies just from my Spanish.)
I’ve written once before about this: To Be or To Be? In Spanish, That’s the Question is a review of a very useful little book on the subject. Now, I’m going to provide you with some solid information from around the web. (This is going to be a format I’ll use more here. I will always provide links to what I quote…)
Ser and Estar Online
I sifted through a lot of pages to find a good one. One of the clearest explanations is at Spanishdict.com, a site I have blogged about before. On this subject, I liked their memory aid for ser: DOCTOR stands for Description, Occupation, Characteristic, Time, Origin, and Relationship. Read the article for more.
A Video about These Two Verbs
Professor Jason has a lot of good videos for learning Spanish on YouTube. I blogged about him a couple of years ago. Here is his lesson on ser and estar:
I discovered that there are a lot of videos made by high school students on ser and estar but none that held my interest enough to share with you.
