Ser / estar - location
Hello I am studying ser/estar at the moment and am confused with regards to location which I understand is temporary and comes under estar but I have completed some exercises recently where the phrase 'Madrid es la capital de Espana' (ser) and another phrase 'Caracas esta en Venezuela' which ties in with the location part of estar. Are these two phrases correct and if so why is the first 'ser'...Thankyou
3 Answers
One is stating the fact that Madrid is the capitol. The other is showing location of the city. If you stated that Caracas is the capitol of Venezuela then you would again use "es" instead of "está". If you were saying that Madrid is in Spain, you'd use "está" because it's a location rather than just stating a fact of identification.
Since you are studying ser/estar, this weekly practice game might be of interest to you:
If you follow the links to the previous weeks, you should be able to get to all of the different practice exercises.
How you feel and where you are always use the verb 'estar.'
Ser is ONLY used for location when speaking of an event.
My opinion:
Although this question has already been correctly answered, I just want to address some of the thought processes in ser vs. estar, in light of the use of the word “temporary” above.
Permanent vs. temporary is a rather poor approximation of the difference between ser vs. estar. A much better paradigm is to think of it as how something is defined vs. the state/condition something is in. Or simply what something is vs. what it is being. As defined by Spanish speakers as a whole.
Now it might seem like how something is, how it is defined, would be permanent, and the state something is in would be temporary. And it works enough of the time that people use temporary and permanent. But it will fail you at times.
A child is a child (ser), a young man is a young man (ser), but a dead person is a person, who happens to be in the state of being dead (estar). Which of those three is the more permanent.
If something is broken, it is broken, that is the condition it is in, it does not define it, even if it broken beyond all repair and will never be fixed. Nice time to point that one could argue that a broken thing is by definition broken, but as I stated above, you have to use the paradigm as the Spanish speaking world does, not with your own inner logic.
So, a banana is yellow (ser)- because that is how people view bananas- that is what they are intrinsically. Even though they spend a lot longer green, and if you don’t eat them, some time black and mushy. If you say an apple is green using ser, you imply that is the type of apple it is (by definition is it green)- it is a variety that is green when it is ripe. If you say an apple is green using estar, that is its condition, it is unripe.
If you say coffee is wonderful, you use ser- by definition coffee is wonderful. If you say the cup of coffee in your hands is wonderful, that is its state, someone made it that way- estar. So always use estar to complement the chef- you want to imply that the chef put it in that state, not that it was intrinsically good to begin with.
So, for location- location generally does no define a thing in the Spanish speaking world (again one could argue that Paris would not be Paris if it were not in France, but one could argue with just about anything if one wanted to). The exception for location is when it is an event, because in the Spanish speaking world, events are defined by their location. So you do use ser when you, for instance, say the party is at someone’s house (La fiesta será en la casa de Juan).
So although no paradigm will be perfect, and you will have to learn how to interpret any paradigm in light of how Spanish speakers have agreed to think about the world, I think my paradigm will get you the correct answer more often than a permanent vs. temporary one.
