A funny quirk of English I never noticed until I started learning Spanish:
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
The problem is that you are mixing two different constructs, if you are refering to the whole thing you have to say un/una, if you are describing a property of something you don't use it.
Es un perro, es macho. (It's a dog, is male)
If you are talking about doctor being a property of someone,like his profession, you say "es médico" but if you are refering to the doctor as an entity and not a property of someone you have to use "a":
Es un médico muy famoso (He is a very famous doctor). "Es médico muy famoso" again makes no sense.
A good parallel in English is actually “going to (or being at) school.” While you can say you’re at “the” school or “a school”, they mean different things than just being at school. Ditto for UK “to hospital.” (Cf. to university, to college, to city hall, in government)
Notably these are not the norm in English, but they do illustrate the pattern.
But he is totally right Spanish is more consistent in that respect, because it has a plural article. You can say "son unos perros" as well when you put that sentence in plural.
Of course, that doesn't say anything about the languages in general, there are also things where Spanish is less consistent. E.g. why do we say "la película es buena" but "el día está bueno"? I'm a native Spanish speaker and when asked by foreigners about a rule that would explain that, I've never been able to come up with one.
I'm learning Chinese and my feeling is that it's more consistent than both Spanish and English, things actually tend to make a lot of sense in Chinese. A pity that between the tones and the characters, it's much harder to learn than either of them.
>why do we say "la película es buena" but "el día está bueno"?
I don't know if I'm quite qualified to lecture you on your mother tongue, but AFAIR that's because one is an unchangeable inherent quality (of the movie), and the other one is a temporary condition (of the weather).
As a learner, I find Spanish/Castellano to be quite consistent, actually.
It's normal that one's native language's quirks tend to be very difficult to explain, because you learned them intuitively. E.g. I was surprised to learn from conversations that a lot of Spanish speakers seem to have never heard what the subjuntivo is, and being told, couldn't explain for the life of them why they use it all the time.
But the "rule" you mention has at least one exception: death is clearly not a temporary condition, but a dead person "está muerta" y no "es muerta"
I don't really see that as an exception or contradiction, rather a side effect of my poor way of communicating it. This "rule" isn't meant to be exhaustive, but is a mnemonic device for a more complex set of rules that spans one or more pages in a textbook. It works in my head. ;)
The way I see it, a dead person used to be alive before "changing state": in that sense it's a "condition", even if it's not exactly temporary. The difference between ser and estar stems from the inherence of a quality.
I've seen it put in English as: ser is about what something or someone is, estar is used for the how. (You can say: Es un muerto. Because that's what he is. But: Está muerto. He was alive.)
Dato curioso: supuestamente en España se dice "estar casado", en Latinoamerica es "ser casado". Make of that what you will...
hbn · · focus · HN ↗
In Spanish, to say for example, "he is a doctor," you would say "él es médico." Which more literally translates to "he is doctor," which feels unintuitive coming from English. Spanish DOES have an equivalent for "a" - "un/una", so the natural thing for an English speaker to say would be "él es UN médico", but I understand that to be awkward/unnatural.
But then I realized, when you say the same sentence in plural - "they are doctors" - you don't have an article. You don't say "they are some doctors" (I had to Google, apparently "some" isn't an article anyway?)
So Spanish ends up more consistent - Singular: "Él es médico." Plural: "Ellos son medicos."
Unlike English - Singular: "He is a doctor." Plural: "They are doctors."
soyyo · · focus · HN ↗
Es un perro (its a dog)
Saying "es perro" makes no sense.
The problem is that you are mixing two different constructs, if you are refering to the whole thing you have to say un/una, if you are describing a property of something you don't use it.
Es un perro, es macho. (It's a dog, is male)
If you are talking about doctor being a property of someone,like his profession, you say "es médico" but if you are refering to the doctor as an entity and not a property of someone you have to use "a":
Es un médico muy famoso (He is a very famous doctor). "Es médico muy famoso" again makes no sense.
alpinisme · · focus · HN ↗
Notably these are not the norm in English, but they do illustrate the pattern.
Al-Khwarizmi · · focus · HN ↗
Of course, that doesn't say anything about the languages in general, there are also things where Spanish is less consistent. E.g. why do we say "la película es buena" but "el día está bueno"? I'm a native Spanish speaker and when asked by foreigners about a rule that would explain that, I've never been able to come up with one.
I'm learning Chinese and my feeling is that it's more consistent than both Spanish and English, things actually tend to make a lot of sense in Chinese. A pity that between the tones and the characters, it's much harder to learn than either of them.
shmeeed · · focus · HN ↗
I don't know if I'm quite qualified to lecture you on your mother tongue, but AFAIR that's because one is an unchangeable inherent quality (of the movie), and the other one is a temporary condition (of the weather).
As a learner, I find Spanish/Castellano to be quite consistent, actually.
It's normal that one's native language's quirks tend to be very difficult to explain, because you learned them intuitively. E.g. I was surprised to learn from conversations that a lot of Spanish speakers seem to have never heard what the subjuntivo is, and being told, couldn't explain for the life of them why they use it all the time.
josemfb · · focus · HN ↗
shmeeed · · focus · HN ↗
The way I see it, a dead person used to be alive before "changing state": in that sense it's a "condition", even if it's not exactly temporary. The difference between ser and estar stems from the inherence of a quality.
I've seen it put in English as: ser is about what something or someone is, estar is used for the how. (You can say: Es un muerto. Because that's what he is. But: Está muerto. He was alive.)
Dato curioso: supuestamente en España se dice "estar casado", en Latinoamerica es "ser casado". Make of that what you will...