The uses of Ser and Estar are an important part of Spanish that you should always be revising.
In today’s podcast, you will learn about one specific part: the uses of ser and estar with adjectives.
As a reminder, ‘ser’ tends to imply a permanent feature and ‘estar’ tends to imply a temporary feature. Keep this in mind as you listen to the examples for today.
Examples from today’s podcast:
Elena is a good person, she always gives to the poor – Elena es buena, ella siempre da a los pobres.
This wine is of high quality – Este vino es muy bueno.
This gazpacho tastes great / amazing – Este gazpacho está buenísimo.
The boy is very attractive. He is tall, dark and his body is incredible – El chico está muy bueno. Es alto, moreno y el cuerpo está increíble.
I don’t like your friend he is a bad (person) – No me cae bien tu amigo, él es malo.
The Paella is cheap because it is low quality – La paella es barata porque es muy mala.
Sonia has spent all day in bed she is very sick – Sonia ha pasado todo el día en la cama, ella está muy mala.
This chicken is bad, I don’t like it – Este pollo está malo, no me gusta.
Christy Walton is the richest women in the world – Christy Walton es la mujer más rica del mundo.
The churros are so good – Los churros están tan ricos.
Your sister is very intelligent – Tu hermana es muy lista.
I’m still not ready. I need five more minutes – Todavía no estoy listo. Necesito 5 minutes más.
My car is green – Mi coche es verde.
Paco es green, he needs to keep learning – Paco está verde, tiene que seguir aprendiendo.
The apple is unripe – La manzana está verde.
The shirt is black – La camisa es negra.
I’m angry because the house is dirty – Estoy negro porque la casa está negra.
María is very open, she usually speaks to everyone at the party – María es muy abierta, ella suele hablar con todo el mundo en la fiesta.
Who left the door open? – ¿Quien dejó la puerta abierta? (La puerta está abierta)
Andrés is very closed he doesn’t speak to anybody – Andrés es muy cerrado, no habla con nadie.
The restaurant is closed, it normally opens at seven – El restaurante está cerrado, normalmente abre a las siete.
Other episodes mentioned in this podcast:
How else can you ser and estar with adjectives?
Podcast: Play in new window
If others are wondering like I did I wanted to know more about the use of negra to mean ‘angry’. So I went to my dictionary that lists definition & specific uses by country. It wasn’t in any of my reference material so I googled it. See uploaded images that I found. The first from a grammar book and the second from a spanish tutor in Spain. Next I checked my regional latino american books. Not used in any of them. I found one reference in Spain that suggests to use this as furious. I am learning both Spain & latino american spanish so this is useful to know.
Does anyone else find entering text here painfully slow? This is an issue for me despite a fast computer & solid wifi.
Hi Rosemary, I’m not sure about the text being slow. It would be good to hear if others are having problems.
You can see here adjective use number 5: http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/negro
“me pone negro” is commonly used to express anger.
Also here adjective use number 15: http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=negro
I believe that “estar negro” is colloquial. The point of the tip is to understand how “ser” and “estar” can change the meaning of adjectives and this is certainly true for colours. There are other colours that behave this way but I wanted to limit this episode to two colours. I may look at more examples in a future episode.
Hi Andrew, do you use estar for the boy is very attractive because it’s an opinion? not characteristic? Also the same with using estar in reference to his body.
It’s best to think of this as simply the difference between “Es bueno” and “está bueno” in terms of adjectives with ser and estar, one is describing the boy’s essential good nature, the other is a comment about his sex appeal. I want to caution against the logic of ‘opinion’ because we can say “El cuadro es hermoso” (The picture is beautiful) which is an opinion, so if you think “opinion” and automatically go to “estar”, then this could cause issues down the road.
Andrew,
Si hablaras un poco menos rapido mi cerebro seguiría en tiempo real.
Ahora, sigue en movimiento lento y entiendo después del hecho.
Me gusta mucho el podcast!
Gracias Marthe 🙂