| Hello everyone and welcome back to ItalianPod101. My name is Desy, mi chiamo Desy, and in this video, we are going to talk about the Italian verbs stare and essere. Because sometimes they are both translated as to be in English but they are not interchangeable. So, let’s have a look at those: |
| Stare |
| Essere |
| I think that you all know the verb essere but let’s see it quickly: |
| io sono, tu sei, lui è, noi siamo, voi siete, essi sono |
| While in the other side we have: |
| Io sto, tu stai, lui sta, noi stiamo, voi state, essi stanno |
| This st- in the beginning maybe a bit tricky but practice a bit and then you’ll master it. |
| Even though we could simply say that essere is “to be” and stare is “to stay”, we use it as in I am and they are not interchangeable, as I’ve said before. There have been many tries to make rules on those but the best way is just to memorize the expressions. So let’s see together some of the uses that we have for both of those, ok? |
| And while I would say that essere is way more used so we will not go through all the examples would be anything (right?)... |
| Io sono italiana. “I’m Italian.” |
| Io sono alta. “I’m tall.” It’s not true. |
| Io sono stanca. “I’m tired.” |
| …so, for many things, like physical conditions, appearance… |
| Io sono a casa. “I’m at home.” |
| …all those things where you just use essere without even thinking, let’s instead focus on stare and see that you use that, for example, for physical conditions too, like with health. When you want to say things like “I don’t feel well”, you don’t say io sono male, because it sounds like you impersonate evil itself, like you are evil, io sono male. What you want to say is… |
| Io sto male. “I don’t feel good./I feel bad./I feel sick.” Io sto male. |
| Come stai? |
| Sto bene. “I’m fine.” |
| Sto male. “I’m not.” I’m not fine. |
| Sto così così. “I’m so so.” |
| OK? Io non sono bene: we don’t say that. |
| Stare is also used for locations but in a specific time and I wouldn’t say place cause location would mean that anyway, but yeah, for a specific time. For example, if I say: |
| Io sto a casa (stasera)...means that I’m staying at home while there would have been the possibility that I wouldn’t have. Wow! |
| So, the same way as in English, if I say sono a casa, I’m at home now, it implies that I may not be in one hour or so, right? While if you ask me what I do tonight and I say io sto a casa implies that I’m going to be at home the whole time, the whole night. |
| Another useful expression that we have with stare is about clothes, like: |
| Questo vestito mi sta bene. “I like how this dress fits me, this dress suits me.” |
| If I say… |
| Questo vestito è largo/grande. “This dress is too big.” Largo. È troppo grande. |
| It’s a fact, like it is that way, it is too big. |
| While if I say… |
| Questo vestito mi sta grande. “...it looks big on me.” |
| Sta in that case is different from è, because è describes the thing as it is and sta is just an impression that I have or the people may have. Like “What do you think about this?”: |
| Cosa pensi di questo vestito? |
| Mmm…è bello (it’s beautiful), ma non ti sta bene. (it doesn’t suit you) |
| So, in that case stare is really useful and it is something that you would translate with to be in English, right? Like “this jacket is tight on me”: |
| La giacca mi sta stretta. |
| It’s not just stretta, the jacket is tight, because it is just tight on me, mi sta stretta, I feel like it is tight on me. |
| Other common expressions with stare include for example…Stare in piedi, “to be standing”. Ok? Like in: |
| “Oh, please, have a seat!” Per favore, siediti! |
| No, no. Sto in piedi. “No, I’m fine, I’ll stand.” |
| Stare in piedi: to stay on your legs, basically, on your feet. Stare in piedi |
| “Did you manage to sit on the train?” Sei riuscito a sederti sul treno? |
| No, sono stato in piedi tutto il tragitto. “No, I’ve been standing all the way.” Or, “I had to stand the whole journey.” |
| Sono stato in piedi. |
| You may end up hearing the verb stare a lot in Italian conversations because it is also the verb that is used for the present continuous’ tense. So, “I’m going”: sto andando, not sono andando but I am going, sto andando. |
| Sto mangiando. “I am eating.” |
| Tu stai facendo… “You are doing…” something. |
| Loro stanno comprando. “They are buying.” |
| In that case, you don’t have think about that as “stay” but “being doing something”. |
| It really depends on regions too the way people use stare and essere. For example, in some regions it’s common to say where things are with the verb stare. Where is the spoon? |
| Sta nel cassetto. “In the drawer” |
| Or, where are the spoons? |
| Sono nel cassetto. “They are in the drawer.” |
| So yeah, stare has a lot of meanings, it is used in a lot of expressions, and it may be confused with to be, so essere, but they are not always interchangeable. That’s what I want you to remember from this lesson, ok? |
| State attenti! “Pay attention!” to this. |
| State attenti a questo! “Pay attention to this!” |
| My advice would be to use essere and then, just in the expressions that you learned, put stare. I know this is really confusing and it’s still confusing for some italians too, me included. I mean, naturally I would say one or the other but I don’t always stop and think about which one to put. Ok? So, I would say, it will eventually become more natural with time. |
| For now, I hope I could give you some interesting insights and some interesting examples. |
| Thank you for watching! Make sure to leave a like and subscribe if you want to see more, and don’t forget to to sign up on ItalianPod101.com for your free lifetime account and be able to have real Italian conversations! I’ll see you soon, ciao ciao! |
Comments
Hide