Breakdown of Los soldados están cansados.
estar
to be (location/state)
cansado
tired
el soldado
the soldier
Questions & Answers about Los soldados están cansados.
Why does this sentence use están instead of son, since the lesson is about using ser with past participles?
In this lesson, you are learning the passive voice, where ser combined with a past participle describes an action being done to the subject. However, this sentence describes a physical state or condition (being tired), not an action currently happening to them. When a past participle is used as an adjective to describe a resulting state or how someone feels, you must use estar.
Why does cansados end in -os?
Because it acts as an adjective describing los soldados (a masculine, plural noun). Whenever you use a past participle with estar (or ser in the passive voice), it must match the subject in both gender and number. If we were talking about a female soldier, it would be la soldado está cansada.
Could I say Los soldados son cansados to mean they were tired out by a long march?
No, combining ser with cansado changes the meaning entirely. Ser cansado means "to be tiring" or "to be annoying." For example, El viaje es cansado means "The trip is tiring." To say someone is experiencing the state of being tired, always use estar.
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