Tricky Spanish things / 2

So last time I said there are two ways to say "I am, you are, he is (etc)". The difference between the two is sometimes bleedingly obvious, but mostly not.

I think the key difference is that you use the verb estar when you are talking about something once-of:

Yo también estoy de acuerdo contigo...
("I also agree with you...": ie in this moment)

and ser when you are talking about something fundamental:

... es decir, soy de tu misma opinión.
("... that is to say, I'm of the same opinion": ie fundamentally, as a matter of identity)

It gets tricky when you want to talk about something that happened yesterday because then you also have to choose whether the thing you are talking about was an ongoing state (tiempo imperfecto) or a point in time (tiempo indefinito). So in the handful of seconds you have to think, you have to decide if the thing you are talking about is once-of/fundamental + ongoing/point-in-time. It's rare and chancy for me to get this right.

And then there's the matter of the subjunctive mode, used to used to indicate uncertainty (where in English we would - sometimes - insert "might"). Oh yes, and all the different prepositions and adverbs coupled with specific verbs (eg "tuvimos que esperar", "we had to wait", where "que" is normally translated "that" or "which"). Oh and the hundreds of verbs which either must be or sometimes are reflexive (like the English "I hurt myself"). And the words that range more widely than a single English word (eg "todavía" which can mean "still/yet/even").

Feel sorry for me? You shouldn't - despite these fine differences, Spanish is ridiculously similar to English. I go about converting English words into Spanish, successfully ("¿Es una palabra?"), and when it comes to putting sentences together, most of the time I can do pretty much what I would in English. The people you should really feel sorry for are those missionaries having a shot at learning non-romance languages.*


*Wikipedia informs me that English isn't actually a romance language, but I don't care, it has to be close.