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On 22/04/06, Scotto Hlad <scott.hlad@hidden.email> wrote: > Hello, > > How did estar and ser come to be separate verbs in languages such as > Portuguese, Spanish and Galician? French seems to combine them in etre > (which no doubt would have been estre in older times). Did I miss something > in high-school Latin class? Or is this more a function of Vulgar Latin that > I missed out on as well? > > If anyone could turn on the lumiere for me, I'd appreciate it. I have > another Romconlang on the boil and this would help me greatly. > > Thanks > Scotto Ser and estar were always separate verbs. Ser comes from essere - "to be", estar comes from stare - "to stand, remain". In old Spanish, ser kept most of its original functions, to state what something is, and also how it is.. Over time in Spanish at least, stare (which became "estar) began to take over the uses of ser that expressed non-inherent or impermanent states of things, and ser expressed what something truly is, how something is. There is also a tendency for quedar to do the same as estar did (as quedar means "to remain" just like estar used to).