Ser vs Estar

Tony B.B2Kwiziq Q&A regular contributor

Ser vs Estar

Every episode of News in Slow Spanish starts with "Es jueves, ..." and so I got the answer to this wrong. So to clarify,

do we use "estar" plus a preposition to be less formal and it's correct, but more formal to use "ser" and that form doesn't take a preposition?

Asked 4 years ago
InmaNative Spanish expert teacher in KwiziqCorrect answer

Hi Tony

Yes, the "usual" way is "es jueves, es viernes, hoy es martes..." but we have the more colloquial "estar a..." which is expressing the same but more colloquially, that's all:

Hoy es miércoles

Estamos a miércoles

Today is Wednesday

Saludos

Inma

David M.C1 Kwiziq Q&A super contributor

Tony - Perhaps we could think of the "estamos" in the sense of *location*: i.e., as an alternative way of putting it > "Today, we are [~immersed] 'in' Wednesday"... or [another example, describing the end of the week !] "(Hooray !) - we have reached Friday" [~= "TGIF" !]

Tony B. asked:

Ser vs Estar

Every episode of News in Slow Spanish starts with "Es jueves, ..." and so I got the answer to this wrong. So to clarify,

do we use "estar" plus a preposition to be less formal and it's correct, but more formal to use "ser" and that form doesn't take a preposition?

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