Question about estar v. ser
I understand for the most part how to tell the two apart, but i am confused on a few things.
words like lost or gone.....are these considered estar or ser ?
such as in a sentence like "They were gone when i arrived" "Estuvieron idos cuando llegué"
In my opinion, that sentence is preterit, and should be conjugated using the estar, becasue gone is not a permanent thing.
am i correct, or am i looking at this all wrong? should it be ser conjugation instead. i thought maybe because those particular people will always be gone from that place at that time, but it is confusing. i consider gone not to be a permanent thing. same with the word lost. can someone give me an idea of how those kinds of words are interpreted.
1 Answer
Sounds to me, pepsiwriter, that you are progressing well in your Spanish. Which means its time to move on from the 'general' thinking that 'ser' is 'permanent' and 'estar' is 'temporary'. That rule of thumb only goes so far. (Think of this: "Mi abuelo está muerto." How much more permanent can you get than that?! 
You will find this reference article very enlightening! Ser vs. Estar, by Lazarus)
In your examples, the word "lost" or "perdidos" would be used with 'estar'. But a native speaker will more often use the verb "perderse" to express the same thing.
They were lost. "Se perdieron."
For the word "gone", it is very rare that this would be used as an adjective in Spanish. There may be a way, but I can't think of one right now. So your example could be put this way:
"They were gone when I arrived" "Cuando llegué, ya se fueron." (When I arrived, they already went / 'were gone'.)
In fact, in English we use 'is' for a lot of things where Spanish uses other verbs. (He is hungry. He is 54 years old. He is cold. etc.) Just keep at it. You'll eventually get the hang of it. 
