Quick answer
Soy Tom. Eres de Madrid. Mi hermana es médica.
I am Tom. You are from Madrid. My sister is a doctor. Ser answers the question "who or what is this?" — the things that stay true when the day is over.
The words of this lesson
Meeting a flatmate: the six forms
Imagine you move into a shared flat in Valencia and someone asks about you. Everything you answer runs on one verb. Ser is irregular, so the six forms are worth learning as a block: soy (I), eres (you), es (he, she, it, and formal you), somos (we), sois (you all, Spain), son (they, and you all elsewhere).
Notice that soy already carries "I". You do not need yo: soy Tom is a complete sentence. English speakers keep adding the pronoun because English cannot drop it. Spanish adds yo only for contrast: yo soy de Bristol, él es de Dublín.
What ser is used for
Four jobs cover almost everything you need at the start. Identity: soy Tom, ella es mi hermana. Origin, always with de: somos de Irlanda. Work: es camarero — and remember Spanish leaves out "a" here. Lasting qualities: mi piso es pequeño, son muy simpáticos.
Two more slip in quickly: material and possession, both with de. La mesa es de madera (the table is wooden), el libro es de Ana (the book is Ana’s).
Adjectives have to match
When ser is followed by an adjective, the adjective takes the gender and number of the person or thing described: mi hermano es alto, mi hermana es alta, mis hermanas son altas. Adjectives ending in -e or a consonant change only in the plural: es interesante, son interesantes.
To ask what someone is like, use ¿cómo es? — literally "how is he?", but it asks about character, not mood.
Where you are matters
Spain uses <span class="es-inline">sois</span> for a group of friends (¿sois de aquí?), while Latin America uses <span class="es-inline">son</span> for every group. In Argentina the informal "you are" is <span class="es-inline">sos</span> instead of <span class="es-inline">eres</span>.
Memory trick
Ser answers "who or what?" — the answer would still be true tomorrow.
A short dialogue
Typical mistakes
Yo soy un ingeniero.
Soy ingeniero.
Spanish drops both the pronoun and the article before a job. The verb form soy already says "I".
Soy from Bristol → Soy Bristol.
Soy de Bristol.
Origin always needs de after ser; without it the sentence says you are the city itself.
Mi hermana es simpático.
Mi hermana es simpática.
The adjective after ser matches the person described, so a feminine subject takes the -a form.
Practice
Practise these ser — to be
0/8 matched — tap a Spanish word, then its translation
Check yourself
Which sentence says "I am a teacher" correctly?