"Está mal" is a different *flavor* than "es malo" (or "El mundo es malo"), like the former is more of an emotive "The world sucks" and the latter is more of a detached judgment "The world is a bad place"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
It's like if you were talking about a person, "Arthur está mal" means "Arthur's doing badly right now/Arthur's sick/Arthur's in trouble", while "Arthur es malo" straightforwardly means "Arthur is a bad person"
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Right, I remember that part specifically bc of the lesson in class about "how do you say someone or yourself is sick"
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Replying to @BootlegGirl
Yeah I thought about it and the closest thing to "está mal" in English is "in bad shape" So if you say "The world is in bad shape" vs "The world is a bad place" it means different things Neither one actively implies that it might change soon though
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
Also the latter definitely has more of a moral judgment in it, like if you want to say a person is bad in the sense of *evil* it's always "es malo" Is the world just, like, fucked or is the world designed to fuck you Is the world dead or is the world a vampire
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Replying to @BootlegGirl
Yes, the use of language here is tricky since I think you'd say "Es un vampiro", even if a vampire is something you become via infection (like you also use "ser" for someone's occupation but not for being dead) Then again vampires aren't real
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
But I was just making a Smashing Pumpkins reference
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
Actually the corpse thing is worth digging into I think because the reason for the apparent logical contradiction is the way we think about death Like it's kind of a culturally universal thing that we *imagine* death as the person going away to another place
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
After a person dies we still refer to them as though the living person is the entity and they've gone to the afterlife or simply ceased to be If someone asks, say, "What does George Washington look like" It's inappropriate to answer "He's a small pile of dust and bone fragments"
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So like I'm pretty sure if I were to go full morbid and say "George Washington is a corpse" or "George Washington is food for worms" that would be "ser", "George Washington es un cadáver", "Es comida para los gusanos"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
Whereas the polite, normal meaning of "Washington is dead" is in the same register as "He's no longer with us" or "He's passed on" We're treating it as a location and not a fundamental change to his nature
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
Which is why it makes sense in a way that things like your occupation ("Es profesor") or marital status ("Es la esposa de Juan") are ser but "está vivo/muerto" is estar
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