Ser and estar
I haven't had any Portuguese speakers jumping in to help me with my questions, but this one probably has a common answer with Spanish, so maybe some of you Spanish speakers can tell me how you think it should go.
Portuguese (like Spanish) has distinct verbs ser and estar (to be permanently or inherently; to be temporarily or accidentally). I'm all right with using these in the present and future, but I'm terribly confused about how they work in the past. Ser and estar have distinct past-tense forms for each Portuguese past tense. When is it appropriate to use one or the other? Is there an obvious rule? Does it matter whether the situation described is persisting? Does it matter whether people recognized something as permanent at the time, or is it a question of whether people now see it as permanent? (I'm thinking of the contrast between "Está doente" and "É doente", for example, but what if you were describing the onset of a chronic illness?)
This seems like an interesting philosophical question. For example, if we're saying that a day was hot, or that a law was unjust, is it inherent to those things that they were that way? Is that different from the situation if we're saying that today is hot or that a law is presently unjust? Do Portuguese speakers commit themselves to philosophical positions by their choice of ser or estar in a given situation? If you like General Semantics and hate Plato, do you feel that estar is less philosophically corrupt than ser?
Michelle once told me that you can subtly insult people by saying something like "Você está linda" -- literally "You are beautiful", but in the sense of "You are beautiful for the time being". In English you could say "You're beautiful tonight!" and raise the same question: hmmm, what about at other times?
The specific thing I was trying to say that raised this question was "it was useful" -- "foi útil" or "esteve útil"? Does it matter whether the benefit obtained was long-lasting? Does it matter whether the thing to which it was useful was long-lasting?
