July 18 2013. §
The Spanish Be
Yes, the Spanish be, not bee. Languages are wonderful tools for understanding how we see the world (see linguistic relativity).
In high school (and to this day), one of the things with which I struggled the most in Spanish was the difference between ser and estar. If you haven’t taken Spanish before, these two words represent different forms of the verb to be. Roughly, ser means to (permanently) be, while estar means to (temporarily) be. English simply has the verb to be.
This difference in language may seem small, but can show up in very large ways.
Since this is a blog about feeling, let’s see how it shows up in this realm.
In Spanish, the experience of temporary sadness can be expressed in this way:
Estoy triste.
…and the experience of permanent sadness in this way:
Soy triste.
The first one means that I have sadness in the moment, and the second means that I have sadness all the time and am just a sad person. Useful distinctions.
In English, it gets somewhat confusing.
I am sad.
Does that mean you are currently sad or that you are always sad?
A trick you can use in English to emphasize the fleeting nature of your state is to say:
I feel sad.
To feel implies a more temporary condition and can pull you away from the gravity of the English to be.
Like many things, this is something that is so very easy for me to know in my head, and so very hard for me to know in my body.
I leave this post realizing that while I still struggle with the Spanish be, I also struggle with the English be, and I feel confident that I am not the only one who does so.