‘To Be or Not to Be’—in Spanish

By Ilan Stavans. Spanish has two verbs for “to be”: ser  and estar. The difference between them is dramatic, not to say existential. Ser  refers to the condition of being as a whole, whereas estar  places that condition in a temporal context. We say soy feliz  to describe a person’s character: I’m a happy person. Instead, we say estoy feliz  to refer to a passing mood: I’m happy now, but who knows about tomorrow? Of course, there are multiple, at times unexplainable, nuances to this dichotomy. For instance, it’s hard to explain exactly how, but the discrepancy between estoy feliz que soy feliz and soy feliz que estoy feliz sums up the complications Spanish speakers face when explaining what life is about. More...