Ser and estar

Hello,

 

Ladekwa--and, I presume, its successor Latejami--has shown itself to be proficient at making all the lexical distinctions that English-speakers are accustomed to making. It also makes many grammatical distinctions that non-English speakers are accustomed to making, such as degrees of politeness, topicalisation or voice changes. But what about some important non-English lexical distinctions? I am thinking here of the Spanish distinction between ser and estar, both of which would translate into English as "to be", yet which make what to the Spanish-speakers is an important distinction between essence and accident. You "estar" at work today, or you "estar" well at the moment, but you "ser" an Australian or you "ser" a data analyst. In most cases, this distinction could probably be ignored in the interlingua, because "ser" and "estar" have customary usages that can be identified from context, i.e. translate with "ser" when talking about nationality or occupation but "estar" when talking about location, condition or emotion--but the distinction could not be ignored in every case. An editorial in La Nacion once had the headline "Somos o estamos indeciso?", or "Are we indecisive, or merely undecided?" How would the interlingua make this kind of distinction when it had to be made?

 

Geoff