or a time lapse given for the condition of the adjective. Estar is always used to apply adjectives to animate objects if it is not a permanent state or characteristic of such animate object. However, some things that nowadays can be changed but before could not (or were not expected to) work like permanent characteristics (for example, nationality, beliefs, sex, looks, being married, degree of intelligence and degree of sanity.) Of course, even those can be expressed with estar if the animate object is acting as if they were his characteristics but they are not, or if the characteristics are more emphasised than usual. For example, és molt socialista, "she/he's a convinced socialist" vs. estàs molt socialista!, "you are being very socialist!"; és molt maca, "she is very beautiful" vs. està molt maca, "she looks very beautiful", as in "better than usual"; és mort, "he is dead" vs. està com mort, "he is acting as if he were dead." Ser is always used for locations except if there is a time lapse given or if the location actually means that someone works or lives in the indicated place. Estar is always used with modal adverbs and equivalents like fixed prepositional locutions. Estar is always used to express a point of an evolution or scale (for example, els termòmetres estan a 20 graus, "thermometers are at 20 degrees.") "Animate objects" refers mainly to people, animals, and whatever is thought to be sentient (for example, a child playing with a doll will probably treat it as an animate object). Italian Italian copulas The Italian copulas did not undergo the same development as in other languages, having preserved the Vulgar Latin forms essere and stare. Essere Stare Usage Essere is the main copula. Stare refers to state rather than essence, but more narrowly than in Spanish. Essere is used for almost all cases in which English uses "to be". It therefore makes sense to concentrate on the few uses of stare. Stare means "to be", "to be feeling", or "to appear" with bene, male, meglio, come?, etc.: Come stai? "How are you?", Sto bene "I am well." Stare is used to form continuous forms of tenses: sto aspettando "I am waiting", Stavo parlando con... "I was speaking with..." Stare'''s past participle stato has replaced that of essere, and so stato is used for "been" in all senses.Starci (lit. To stay in it) means