OK. So now, if you’ve gone through the first five Newbie Lessons, you should be able to conjugate the verbs “ser” and “estar” for the Present Tense of the Indicative Mood. Who can do it? Also, who can describe some of the differences in usage between the two verbs?

Maxiewawa,

¿Qué tal? (How’s it going?) Just wanted to make a couple of comments. First of all, verbs in Spanish don’t show gender. Think about the great example you gave above “estoy contento”. This is correct, but why? What kind of a word is “contento”? In this case, it’s an adjective, which describes the subject “yo”. And this subject is implicit. We can say “yo estoy contento” or “estoy contento”, and it pretty much means the same thing (without splitting hairs over the emphasis given by the personal pronoun).

Now, if our friend María were to construct this sentence, she would say “estoy contenta”, where the feminine gender is shown by the inflection of the adjective. What we are really talking about here is “concordance”, which is the equality of gender and number between the noun and adjective, and the equality of number and person between the verb and its subject. It may be a good idea to open up a thread in the forum under the name “Concordance”…?

As for the conjugation, you’re getting there. Remember, you can also check out the Verb Conjugations in the Learning Center for comprehensive reference materials. Anyway, here are the conjugations of “estar” and “ser” in the Present Tense of the Indicative Mood:

estar / ser

Singular

yo estoy / soy
tú estás / eres
él está / es
ella está / es
usted está / es

Plural

nosotros estamos / somos
vosotros estáis / sois
ellos están / son
ellas están / son
ustedes están / son

Joseph,

Gracias for your help! So I should have said “I’m happy, and I’m male. I included that second part because it’s relevant when using Spanish adjectives, 6non?”

I’ll give your idea a go!

Peggy,

Es un gusto conocerte. (It’s nice to meet you.) Depending on you level, the audio blogs can be quite challenging; however, as any bilingual person will tell you, one of the biggest steps in the language learning process is accepting the fact that one does not know every word of a language; that that’s OK; and that he or she will find a way to make sense out of as much of it as possible.

I’d love to hear what you think of them, and, what you do with them. There are lots of ways to study!

Saludos cordiales,

Joseph

Y soy de la ciudad Nueva York…

Hola a todos. Me gusta mucho ésta lección. Yo soy de Delaware, en EEUU. He estado en Lima hace viente años, mas o menos. Estaba una ciudad muy hermosa, y la desfruté tanto. Los museos, la comida, la gente… todo estaba excelente. Me gustaría mucho viajar al Perú otra vez, pero es costoso. Si me ganaría la loteria…. Jejeje.

I relly like the depth you provide in grammatical and vocabulary explanations and examples. Now I totally understand the distinctions between use of adjectives with “estar” vs. “ser.” I kinda knew this, but now it’s very concrete for me. Ella no es aburrida, pero está aburrida. Gotta be careful with this stuff to avoid insulting someone!

Thanks for a good lesson
Karenn

Tengo otra pregunta, por favor.

In some other lessons (Pimsleur), they never use the article “los” with estados unidos. “Soy de estados unidos.” However, in your lessons you DO use the article.

My question: I assume both usages are correct (article v. no article), but which is considered most proper, or which is most common. Is it also a regional difference, perhaps? What about other countries. Do you say “Soy de republica dominicana” or “soy de LA republica dominicana?” Or both?

¿Es usted de perú, o DEL perú?

Thanks for your help.

Karenn

Greetings from the US, Ann. China is, in Spanish… China! It is pronounced differently. CHEEN-a.

Yes, I still get tripped up on ser v. estar, but after awhile you will find it gets a lot easier. I think most spoken language tends to fall into routine patterns. Nothing is ever totally new, just variations o flearned patterns. And before long, you’ve learned enough “set patterns” that you can manipulate them pretty accurately.

That’s why lessons with short dialogs, like these in Spanishpod101, are such good teaching material. If you semi-memorize the ones using ser or estar, you’re establishing “use habits” so that you’ll use them correctly without having to think much about it.

You’ll find most of the time there are “rules”: estar for location, ser for time, ser for occupations/jobs, estar for moods/emotions, etc. But there will be some situations in which there may be some ambiguity. At any rate, in most situations you will still be understood, from context, even when you don’t say it quite right.

Karenn