Spanish has not one but two verbs that both translate as 'to be' — and telling them apart is one of the first genuine hurdles for anyone learning the language before a trip to Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America. A recent piece from Mexperience uses a famously dense Mexican saying to unpack the difference: 'Ni son todos los que están, ni están todos los que son.' Translated word for word it comes out as gibberish — 'Neither are all those that are, nor are all those that are' — yet to a Spanish speaker it carries a sharp point about people who seem to matter but don't, and people who matter but are overlooked.
The key lies in the split between the two verbs. 'Ser' covers permanence and essence: who someone is, what something is. 'Estar' handles the temporary: location, mood, condition, situation. You use 'ser' to say what a person is and 'estar' to say where they are or how they're feeling today. Because the two verbs describe fundamentally different kinds of being, they're almost never interchangeable — swap one for the other and you change the meaning of the sentence.
The saying also showcases another quirk that trips up beginners: Spanish routinely drops the subject of a sentence entirely. The verb ending tells you who's acting, so 'no está' means 'he's not here' while 'no es' means 'it's not him.' Same two words in English, entirely different accusations in Spanish. Context and conjugation do the work that English pronouns do.
There are edge cases, of course. Marriage is one: 'está casada' and 'es casada' can both mean 'she's married,' though the second leans more toward 'she's a married woman' — a statement about status rather than circumstance. Both verbs are irregular too, with 'ser' being slightly more unruly than 'estar' in its conjugations.
Why should a holidaymaker care? Because these aren't just classroom abstractions — they're the difference between saying 'I'm boring' (soy aburrido) and 'I'm bored' (estoy aburrido), or describing a dish as permanently delicious versus being in a good mood at dinner. A little grip on ser and estar makes menus, directions, small talk and everyday politeness in Mexico far less confusing, and locals genuinely appreciate the effort. If you're planning more than a beach-and-fly visit, spending an evening on this one grammatical distinction pays for itself the first time someone asks how you're doing and you can answer properly: 'Estoy bien, gracias.'
For travellers who like to go beyond phrasebook Spanish, this saying is also a nice cultural artefact in its own right — the kind of expression you'll hear in conversation and now actually understand. Credit: Mexperience.
