I’m at a solid intermediate level and absorbed many years ago that it’s “tengo” hambre, sed, razón, miedo, etc, for what in English would be “I am” + adjective. So I was floored to realize today that I’d been saying “I’m curious” wrong for years. I guess I was assuming curious followed the Estar + Adj pattern (enojada, aburrida, etc) Now I’m wondering - are there any other not-so-obvious Tener + noun usages I might be missing?
Una vez escuché a una de esas que se hacen llamar "hispanic" decir "esta dando" para decir it's giving, a la mayoria de personas les da igual, a mi me caga cuando traducen todo letra por letra
I mean, the rule that ''I am + adjective'' takes ''tener'' as the base verb is wrong anyway. Tener is only relevant for certain adjectives, not all or even most. If I want to say ''I am sad'' it's definitely not ''tengo triste'', it's ''estoy triste'' and so on.
There's a couple of things going on here, in your example you are not using, when you are using the noun form of words like hungry (noun hambre) you have to use "tengo", a way to do "I'm + adjective" in spanish would be with the verb estar as you said "estoy hambriento" for example
But curiosity is a funny word as it's not always a temporary state of being but rather a personality trait so it would be "weird" to say "estoy curioso" or "Soy curioso" to refer to a temporary state like "I'm curious" can be in English it's kind of ambiguous to just say "Soy curioso" so we rather use "tengo curiosidad" to ask for something, as a temporary state and "Soy una persona curiosa" to describe a curious nature
Tbf I don't think this has anything to do with ser being used for identities, and estar being used for conditions (which is much more accurate than the permanent/temporary way it's often taught). Because in theory if you have a condition of being curious then it would be perfectly correct to say estoy curioso in Spanish. It's just that the language has developed certain exceptions surrounding particular adjectives that sometimes don't have a logical explanation. And with curiosity you simply have to use the verb tener unless you're saying you're a curious person, i.e. soy muy curioso.
Estoy curioso isn’t really grammatically wrong, but I’d only ever use it when describing a temporary situation like:
Últimamente estoy muy curioso.
Otherwise it’s tengo curiosidad, or ser curioso (for a more permanent description).
Right. that’s what I think I said: I know that in some cases you use tener + noun rather than estar + adj. I thought I knew all the basic tener usages. I realized today I missed an obvious one and am wondering if I missed any others.
I don't think many of us have an exhaustive list off the top of our heads, it's something you get used to be doing lots of reading, listening and speaking. And some adjectives can also be both such as paciente. It's perfectly correct to say él tiene mucha paciencia as well as él es muy paciente.
It would be "tengo tristeza" but yeah, I agree it's not always about permanence, we usually go for "estoy triste", but I think that the reason why we use "estoy triste" a lot more than "tengo tristeza" is because it feels more personal you make it a character trait, we usually refer to that a permanent thing for simplicity but the point is more nuanced than that
Tengo tristeza isn't really used and in terms of meaning there's no discernible difference with estoy triste. If you used the former you'd get odd looks because that's just not the way people speak.
Sí se usa, pero tampoco es tan común, o sea, claro que hay expresiones como "Tengo una tristeza inmensa"
Hence the isn’t really used.
This is maybe a dialect thing.
To me "tengo una tristeza inmensa" is normal the same as "tengo una curiosidad enorme"