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Christophe Grandsire wrote: > Also, indeed, > estar is used exclusively for position (meaning inherited from Latin). Actually, with permanent locations, as, for example, the location of cities or houses, _quedarse_ "to remain" is often used in place of _estar_, presumably because of the "temporary" connotations that estar has acquired, so, e.g., Espan~a se queda en Europa. > With > past participles estar seems to be used with transient states while ser is more > used for unchangeable states (though IIRC you say "estar muerto" instead of > *"ser muerto", which sounds a bit contradictory - maybe connected to the belief > of the resurrection of the bodies at the end of days of the Catholic > Church ;))) Actually, it's ser = inherent, part of the nature of; estar = condition. Being dead isn't an inherent quality of the deceased, it's the condition they happen to be in. :-) E'l *es* mi padre, pero el *esta'* muerto. There are some things, like, _esposo_ that can use either, IIRC, depending on whether the speaker views the person in question as being primarily a spouse, or being a person who happens to be a spouse. I *think* it would be like, if you knew someone only as so-and-so's spouse, you'd say _E'l es el eposo de Mari'a_, but if you knew him as a person, you'd say _E'l esta' el esposo de Mari'a_ -- "There's no such thing as 'cool'. Everyone's just a big dork or nerd, you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." - overheard ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42