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
-
-
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
1 reply 1 retweet 4 likes -
-
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
1 reply 1 retweet 3 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
But I was just making a Smashing Pumpkins reference
2 replies 1 retweet 4 likes -
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
1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes -
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"
2 replies 1 retweet 6 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
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"
1 reply 1 retweet 4 likes -
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
1 reply 1 retweet 2 likes -
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
1 reply 1 retweet 0 likes
When one of those things changes you actually update the little Wikipedia profile in your head to change the picture you have of the person You replace the photo of a professor with an unemployed person, you replace the photo of a wife with a divorcee
-
-
Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
Whereas when they die you don't actually replace the photo with a photo of a corpse for "accuracy", you just quietly flip it from "is" to "was"
1 reply 1 retweet 1 like -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
So I guess again it's a philosophical question if the world being bad is something applied to your mental picture of the world like a filter (even if it's always been there) or it's bad in the way that it becoming good would need a new picture
0 replies 1 retweet 1 like
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.