ser

Used for identity, characteristics, origin, and time — things considered stable or definitional: soy profesor, es alta, son las tres. This is one half of Spanish's most famous verb confusion for English speakers; see estar for the other half. The rule of thumb: ser for what something fundamentally is, estar for the state it's currently in.

• Soy de México. — I'm from Mexico.
• Ella es muy inteligente. — She is very intelligent.
• Son las cinco de la tarde. — It's five in the afternoon.

Using estar for a permanent characteristic instead of ser — "she is tall" is ella es alta, not *ella está alta* (which would suggest she recently grew, an odd claim). Physical/personality traits default to ser.

Often confused with estar.

• book Ser y tiempo — The standard Spanish title for Martin Heidegger's 1927 philosophical work Sein und Zeit ("Being and Time") — José Gaos's 1951 translation was the reference edition for Spanish-speaking readers for decades.
• quote "Ser o no ser, esa es la cuestión" — The standard Spanish translation of Hamlet's opening line to his famous soliloquy, "To be or not to be, that is the question" (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene I).
• expression "Así es la vida" — A common fixed expression meaning "that's life" / "such is life," used to express resigned acceptance of an unwelcome situation — the direct Spanish counterpart to French's c'est la vie.