Ser vs estarI've just realised that this lesson needs more detail to cover ser and estar.
When talking about something earlier in the day, generally, something that uses estar will use imperfecto, not perfecto nor indefinido, breaking the rule completely! Whereas ser will follow the rule.
So if we ate something delicious this morning we'd say, "!Estaba rico!" not "he sido rico" nor "estuvo rico".
Estar by its nature expresses more transient states of being than ser and the imperfect tense matches this (at least, that's how it feels to me but as I'm not a native Spaniard, I look forward to hearing Kwiziq's native experts' views to expand or correct this for me!)
There doesn’t seem to be an example or text relating to placement in a tense with auxiliary ‘ha’ etc. I gather from the quiz question that you cannot interpose nunca as in ‘no he nunca visto eso’. As this is the natural order in English (I have never seen that) it would be good to have some explicit mention in the text and examples.
I’m not quite clear about the use of the ‘se tardan’ plural. The examples given are with a plural number of hours/minutes. Are the time units the ‘subject’ of the passive? In other words if the time was one hour or one minute, could you still use the plural verb? Or is there some other rule that indicates singular or plural? Or are they just equivalent?
I've just realised that this lesson needs more detail to cover ser and estar.
When talking about something earlier in the day, generally, something that uses estar will use imperfecto, not perfecto nor indefinido, breaking the rule completely! Whereas ser will follow the rule.
So if we ate something delicious this morning we'd say, "!Estaba rico!" not "he sido rico" nor "estuvo rico".
Estar by its nature expresses more transient states of being than ser and the imperfect tense matches this (at least, that's how it feels to me but as I'm not a native Spaniard, I look forward to hearing Kwiziq's native experts' views to expand or correct this for me!)
Hola,
The example given is "No vimos nada desde nuestro asiento" and is translated as "We couldn't see anything from our seats." Should the phrase read "desde nuestros / nuestras asientos?
I had thought that with the noun 'mano' we shouldn't use the possessive pronoun/s?
Please could you advise me here?
Gracias
Clara
Find your Spanish level for FREE
Test your Spanish to the CEFR standard
Find your Spanish level