@pvreed There are two different aspects there. “O pequeno-almoço está incluído?” is meant to be a question about package deals (e.g. whether the cost only covers the room or also includes some/all meals). “O pequeno-almoço é a partir de que horas?” is a question about time, because whether or not you have to pay for it separately, the hotel will presumably serve breakfast every day.
Just noticed in the lesson on food flavours that ser is used when describing intrinsic flavours of food, but estar was used for the meat is salty. Makes sense because I guess meat isnt always salty.
So would it be correct to say
O café está doce.
If for example I put too much sugar in my coffee?
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Yes, that’s a perfect use of estar, @misteri2511! On the other hand, if you were describing the intrinsic flavour of unsweetened coffee, you would say “O café é amargo”.
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Notes above refer to “ser” for permanence. Yet in the lesson on the Portuguese islands there is the sentence “Os Açores estão no oceano Atlântico” - I can’t think of anything more permanent than that. Similarly in the lesson on Sintra there is the sentence “Sintra está rodeada por montanhas”.
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Olá, @david.sturge. That’s true! Locations are one of the exceptions in the use of these verbs, as noted further up in this thread:
I came across two examples in the A1 unit about food that really had me scratching my head.
Os feijões estão crus. Well, they will remain raw forever, unless someone takes a specific action to cook them. It feels like a stretch, but I can see how it can be thought of as a changeable state.
O marisco é fresco. In my experience, seafood stops being fresh if you just look at it the wrong way, and it definitely isn’t fresco anymore if it has been left outside the fridge/bag-of-ice for more than 5 seconds. Way more changeable than the raw/cooked status of beans. So I was very surprised to see the verb ser here.
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Os feijões estão crus → In a culinary context, we say estar cru for things that would presumably be cooked. We wouldn’t normally say it for something like steak tartare. We also use estar for other non-intrinsic states (cozido, grelhado, frito, tostado…).
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O marisco é fresco → This is fresh in the sense that it was presumably not frozen before being sold, just kept on ice.
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