To Be Or Just Be Temporarily...

I have now lived in Spain for two years, and well remember my ignorance thinking that I could learn to speak Spanish within about a year of arriving here. This has proved to be incorrect. I had mistakenly thought that because I could already speak three foreign languages, for some reason learning the fourth would be easy. I had conveniently forgotten the fact that I learned those three languages over a period of several years, and at a time in my life when learning was a lot easier than it is now.

So I started my Spanish lessons and one of the first things I learned was that the Spanish have two verbs for 'to be'. One is 'ser' which means to be permanently, or an aspect of you that is permanent, such as 'soy enfermera' (I am a nurse) or 'soy Holandesa' (I am Dutch). The second verb is 'estar', so it would be 'estoy enferma' (I am ill) or 'estoy cansada' (I am tired).

This distinction is not one that comes easily to me, none of the other languages I have studied have two different verbs for 'to be' - and sometimes I am not sure what verb to apply - I am a nurse now, but maybe tomorrow I will stop being one and do something completely different, so should I apply ser or estar?

But, apart from the frustration of trying to remember which verb to use, there is something very charming about the idea that you can have 'to be' and 'to be temporarily', which I think is actually a good reflection of the Spanish state of mind and their tempo of living. It is as if the language includes an acknowledgement of the fact that there are lots of things (like being ill, being tired) that are only temporary and that will pass. The Spanish seem to have incorporated in their language a sort of get-out or temporary clause, that says, ok you are ill now but it will pass, it is not a permanent state of being. Quite healthy really and maybe it explains their generally happy attitude towards life.