Re: What's going on here?

[JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS <jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR>]

>> There was a headline on an editorial in La Nacion that asked (if I
>> remember right) "?Somos o estamos indeciso?".  The distinction between
the
>> two possibilities (whether the public was indecisive or merely undecided
>> on whatever issue it was) were obviously important enough for some editor
>> to devote space to it.
>
>OK, well what I think is going on there (and again, Jorge will know more
>about this than I do) is that "estamos" expresses a condition, and
>consequently can be used here to express a tendency.

The tendency one is "somos". "Estamos indecisos" would be
"we are undecided", and "somos indecisos" would be "we are
undecisive".  "Estar" is the temporary condition, "ser" is the
immanent one.

I once read that the ser/estar distinction reflected the tendency
of Spaniards to let their spirit ponder on those transcendental
issues of existence, leaving for the industrious Anglosaxons the
more practical distinctions of doing and making.  :)

> The
>point is that I don't think that the "ser/estar" distinction contributes
>anything significant to the English language-web, because its functions
>are handled elsewhere - as your translation of the concepts
>of "somos/estamos" into "indecisive/merely undecided" shows. Conversely,
>"to do/to make" might not contribute anything significant to the Spanish
>web, because Spanish speakers make this distinction in other ways that are
>familiar to them as well.

Of course, English makes do perfectly well with its single "to be", and
Spanish with its "hacer". And each of them can make both distinctions
in its own way.  And so can Lojban and any other language, or it wouldn't
be a language.

Jorge