to its different meanings, estar cannot be used for nationality, gender, or intelligence, but one can say Estou abrasileirado (I have acquired Brazilian ways – state) or Estás americanizado (You have been Americanised – state). The same applies for the difference between É um homem "He is a man" and Está um homem, meaning, "He has grown up to be a man". Ficar, apart from its use as "to stay", and the use mentioned above as a copula translated as "to be located", is extensively used for a change of state (sometimes quite sudden), being translated as "to get" or "to become": Fiquei rico = "I got rich." Ficou triste = "He became sad." Catalan Catalan copulas The Catalan copulas developed as follows: → éssere → ésser → esser → ser → *estare → estar → seure The last three forms of the first verb survive in modern Catalan. Ésser is considered the most standard, followed by ser and, distantly, esser. The verb seure remains as a distinct verb and is not considered a copula. Estar Usage In Catalan, ésser and estar work in a way intermediate between those of Italian and Portuguese. A complete description of its rules of usage is as follows: When referring to inanimate objects, ser is used to tell about either permanent conditions inherent to the object (for example és vermell, "it is red"), unfinished qualities, or non-permanent conditions when there is no implication that there has been or there will be a change in state (for example, la sopa és calenta, "the soup is hot.") Ser is used to talk about a quality of an inanimate object in a given moment (without paying attention to other moments) or exactly the opposite: a quality of an inanimate object which is expected to be true in all moments of the existence of said object. Most uses of past participles as adjectives fall into this category when referring to inanimate objects. When referring to inanimate objects, estar is used to tell about non-permanent conditions when there is an implication of a finished change of state, an implication of a state in a known point of an evolution, or a temporal condition which is expected to change. In some way, estar introduces an adverbial sense to adjectives (for example, la sopa està calenta, "the soup is hot", as in "it has come to be hot.") Thus, both using