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The differences between ser and estar are considered one of the most difficult concepts for non-native speakers. Both ser and estar translate into English as "to be", but they have different uses, depending on whether they are used with nouns, with adjectives, with past participles (more precisely, passive participles), or to express location.
Silva-Corvalán discovered that estar had a decrease in meaning over time, and began to be used in a greater range of contexts. [4] The distinction between ser and estar had lessened. There is a universal tendency of semantic bleaching, which is the loss of meaning or emphasis of a word over time, that is present in estar. [4]
The Spanish copulas are ser and estar.The latter developed as follows: stare → *estare → estar. The copula ser developed from two Latin verbs. Thus its inflectional paradigm is a combination: most of it derives from svm (to be) but the present subjunctive appears to come from sedeo (to sit) via the Old Spanish verb seer.
Similarly, the participle agrees with the subject when it is used with ser to form the "true" passive voice (e.g. La carta fue escrita ayer 'The letter was written [got written] yesterday.'), and also when it is used with estar to form a "passive of result", or stative passive (as in La carta ya está escrita 'The letter is already written.').
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This is similar to the difference between the verbs ser and estar in Spanish and Portuguese (see Romance copula), although this is not an exact match; is and tá are cognate respectively with the Spanish es and está. Examples are: Is fear é. "He is a man." (Spanish Es un hombre, Portuguese (Ele) é um homem) Is duine fuar é.