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I had an interesting discussion with a friend awhile back about the value of having various forms of 'to be' verbs in other languages. In English, we only have one - is/are/am. There's no distinguishing between "I am a teacher" and "I am sad." Both have an implied permanence to them, and the only way to know that "I am sad" might be transient is by experience with each person.
In Spanish (as well as other languages) - there are two.. ser and estar. ser is used for things pertinent to your identity like 'soy cubano' (I am cuban), personality, nationality, race, gender, etc., because those things on permanent labels for us. Estar is for the transient things, like feelings and even employment,; you aren't "permanently" a painter, for example.
There's a big differentiation between identity and states of being in other languages, and English really misses out on it entirely. There's a difference between El es aburrido (he is boring, a boring person) and Yo estoy aburrida (I am bored, but not permanently).
In this case I'm going with 'social democrat' and 'agnostic atheist' as Baraka did.
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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel
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