To Be or Not to Be? To Ser or Estar?

In English, we have one verb, "to be," to express our state of being.  Spanish uses two different verbs which results in much confusion for speakers of English.  Our English verb, to be, has the forms am, are, is, and if I were smart enough yet to make a table, I would set them up in classic form for you.  I'll get there, someday, but not right now.  In the meantime, let me keep this just about the verb "to be."

Spanish is rooted in Latin which had two verbs, essere and estare, and Spanish has continued with that in estar and ser.  The Latin verb essere is to exist, and think of our English noun, essence; the Latin verb estare is to stand.  Many teachers of Spanish have chosen to say that ser means permanent and estar means both temporary and location and I used that for a number of years but, it can lead to errors.  The better definition that I like is that ser is the whatness of something, or someone, and estar is the howness of something or someone.

Infinite Spanish

The infinitive is the root of the verb. In English, we have the infinitive form as the word "to" [I used the quotation marks only to separate the word from others] plus the verb. The infinitive is the pure form of the verb, that is the verb is not changed by time, number, mood or person. An example of infitive use is "to speak." The only word I can immediately think of that does not have an infinitive form is the verb "can" as in "I can speak." We do not have the infinitive "to can." We have a bird called a Toucan, but that's a different form of speech. The word "can" seems to be an auxiliary or helping verb.

The Spanish infinitive has three forms and is made up of two parts. The first part is called the stem and it has the form of verb+ending. Spanish has three endings; -ar, -er-ir. Those are easy to remember for what are the vowels we were taught? a, e, i, o, u. What are the first three vowels? a, e, i. Do you have it? Three endings, all beginning with a vowel, the first three vowels and ending with an r. Think endings are r and you have it. Examples:

Spanish -ar infinitive
Hablar - to speak

Spanish -er infinitive
Comer - to eat

Spanish -ir infinitive
Recibir - to receive


Stephen