Soy and Estoy

[juhantha83]

Im a beginner with spanish and need help. Whats the difference in the meaning of Soy and Estoy and how would i correctly use them in a sentence?

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by juhantha83

Im a beginner with spanish and need help. Whats the difference in the meaning of Soy and Estoy and how would i correctly use them in a sentence?

I can't give a complete answer because it would take too long, and there is probably a section in the Forum which will help you, when @Rusty is online.

Basically, ser denotes a permanent quality or identity

Soy arquitecto (from a time when jobs were permanent)
¿Es éste su pasaporte? Is this your passport?

Estar usually denotes a state which is not permanent or a position where somebody is:

Mi madre está en el salón

The difference can be used with great effect with adjectives:

Estoy aburrido I am bored (at the moment)
Soy aburrido I am boring (permanent state)

Elena es muy guapa Elena is very pretty (she is a pretty girl, always)
Elena está muy guapa Elena looks very pretty (today, but not always )

This just touches the surface of the question. Feel free to ask more specific questions.

[Rusty]

Look here for the differences between ser and estar.

[Manuel]

The link that Rusty added is great, but I would just like to add something.

I highly recommend that you start READING Spanish as soon as possible. Because when you see ser and estar used in all kinds of different sentences and in combination with different words you will start to get a feel for the difference.

Think about your own language: a lot of things you say correctly without really KNOWING why you say it that way. You have just been exposed to the correct way to say something so many times that you just know it's the right way to say it without necessarily knowing the grammar behind it.

I am not suggesting that you don't learn the grammar behind it, because I do think it will help a lot. But if you add a lot of reading as well, you will greatly increase your feel for the language, and become familiar with its idiosyncrasies a lot faster.

Also, you don't need to wait to start reading until you are advanced. Read very simple things, like books for 5 year olds etc. if you can find those. You cannot start early enough with this, in my opinion. To start you off, you can even begin with this simple Sentence Maker online. You simply type in a word or verb and the sentence maker gives you a whole bunch of example phrases with it.

For verbs you can type in the infinitive or one of the conjugacions.
Make sure you spell it correctly with the accents! For example, if you type in "estás", which means "you are" you get phrases like:

"¿Estás casado?" (are you married?)
"Tú estás en el asiento" (you are in the seat)
"Tú estás comiendo un helado" (you are eating an ice cream)

And lots more.
It even has a button with the pronunciation of every phrase too!
Very useful to learn new stuff! Give it a try.

P.S. What I love about the Sentence Maker is that it automatically makes you learn a lot of things you didn't plan to! This can really speed up your learning. For example, if you learn the word for "hunger" (which is "hambre") and you type that in the sentence maker you can get a phrase like the following:

Ellos dejarán de comer cuando no tengan más hambre. (they will stop eating when they are not hungry anymore.) That not only shows you an example of how the word is used in a sentence but it also teaches you about the subjunctive (the form "tengan" of the verb "tener") and how to construct a phrase with a future tense and a subordinate clause etc. Every phrase you read in the Sentence Maker will point to new little things you learn on top of what you were trying to learn.

[Villa]

Originally Posted by juhantha83

Im a beginner with spanish and need help. Whats the difference in the meaning of Soy and Estoy and how would i correctly use them in a sentence?

Soy=I am (from the verb ser to be)
Estoy=I am (from the verb estar to be)

The problem for English speakers is that in Spanish there are
two verbs for one verb in English. The English verb to be in Spanish
is both "ser" and "estar".

Just remember that ser is permanent quality or identity.

Estar usually denotes a state which is not permanent.

Also for example, English has two verbs for one in Spanish with the
English verbs "to do" and "to make". So the Spanish verb "hacer" means
both to do and to make.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by Villa

Estar usually denotes a state which is not permanent.

Which introduces philosophical problems with sentences like

sus padres éstan muertos

Spanish is the only modern European language I know of which has this excellent distinction between an identity and a (temporary) description.

[Manuel]

Originally Posted by Perikles

Which introduces philosophical problems with sentences like

sus padres éstan muertos

Why does this produce a philosophical problem?

I think I saw Angelica put it very well in some other place in the forum, where she said that "ser muerto" would be like being a type of zombie, a "living dead" person.

I think the difference between ser and estar is not so much about whether something is permanent or not, but about whether the condition is something that is an INTRINSIC PART of whatever you're describing.

Because, for example, if you have prepared a meal that is tasty, you say "está bueno" because being tasty is not an intrinsic part of meals in general. If you have prepared a tasty one, it IS permanent for that particular meal, but you still use estar instead of ser because being tasty just applies to THAT particular meal and not ALL meals.

Same thing with being dead. It's estar muerto because normally people are ALIVE, not dead. So the state of being dead is not the "normal" or default state of a human being, therefore when they are dead, you use estar, even though this new state will not change anymore.

That's how I see it anyway.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by Villa

Estar usually denotes a state which is not permanent.

Originally Posted by Manuel

Why does this produce a philosophical problem?

So the state of being dead is not the "normal"

I wasn't being that serious. It's a philosophical question whether being dead is a "normal" state or not, considering that the time during which you are dead is vast compared with the time you are alive. Anyway, normal or not, it sounds pretty permanent to me.

[JPablo]

I think it is a philosophical conundrum of great import, because...

Mi cuerpo está muerto.
Yo vivo y sigo viviendo, pues soy un espíritu eterno.
Estoy muerto de cansancio. Pero soy muy vivo.
Shakespeare está muerto hace muchos siglos, pero nuestro amigo William es un escritor eterno y universal. William, donde quiera que estés: ¡manifiéstate!
Débil es la carne, pero el espíritu es fuerte.

Esto puede ser un debate bizantino, pero todo sea por practicar... Yo soy español, y alguien puede decir que estoy “pirao”...