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On 22/04/06, Padraic Brown <elemtilas@hidden.email> wrote: > I think what he's getting at is how did CL stare, > "stand", come to be used as Sp. estar, "be"? > > Yes, they were two different verbs in Classical > Latin, and stare is not used like esse! It's > certainly in the realm of the Vulgar Latin / > Proto Romance that (e)stare gets a facelift. Or a > promotion, if you will. In that case.... Ser has always kept its meaning from the VL essere, but stare eventually took over a lot of ground that essere originally had. As it meant "to stand, remain", it began to be used in many ways like the English verb "to stand" does, as in "The house stands at the corner" "I stand corrected" (Those might not be good examples, anyone want to take a hit?). Essentially stare came to be perceived as a verb which could specify things which were going on at the moment, indicating how things are at that moment (because after all, to stand is a temporary thing). I would think that over time, this meaning of "to stand, remain" came to be seen as reflecting the state of something, and stare came to be seen as a method of specifying how something is, rather than what something is, as ser seemed more strongly suited to do.