/spanishclass/ - Clase de Español

Re: usted

If I am a cashier at work and I am talking to a customer, do I use "usted"? What if I can't tell if they are younger than me or not? Don't wanna be rude but don't want to sound strange either…

>"Envíanos tus comentarios" sounds better, but it's still a bit off.

What would sound best, then? ¿Envían tus comentarios?

>>72
THANK YOU FOR THIS BOARD!!
I'm learning Latin flavor Spanish and this is very helpful.

/lang/ sent me here.

muchas gracias

/pinoy/ sent me here.

This has been bothering me for a while. When do you use á, é? why do they have a dot above? I took elementary spanish class only once and I didn't encounter a discussion regarding those kind of letters.

>>73
>If I am a cashier at work and I am talking to a customer, do I use "usted"?
Depends on what kind of store and the customer.

I'll assume you're working in a supermarket for the sake of this post and that you're in your 20s.
Identify your customer's traits. Wrinkles, hair, what are they wearing? Are they walking on a cane? Are they important-looking? Say, a guy in a suit carrying a briefcase. If you're young and they're around your age, using tú is pretty much safe.

I'd say discerning between usted/tú is one of those things that one picks up with practice. The line between them is quite blurry and there's no hard rule for it. It's more of a "you know when you see it" kind of thing.


>What would sound best, then?
It's not about the syntax or the conjugation. It's just that feedback doesn't translate well into Spanish. Comentario actually means comment, so it feels a bit forced and unnatural.


>>74
Actually, I tried to keep it region-agnostic, barring the examples, which where the first thing that came to my mind.

I could have included the subjunctive mood in the pic, but it wouldn't have fit on a chart.

>>76
Your post leads me to believe that accentuation rules are left out of language courses, which is completely retarded.

>When do you use á, é?
There are accentuation rules. Acute accents function either as a diacritic (e.g. mi vs mí), or to mark the stress of a word
1. Find the stress in a 2+ syllable word. Let's take tarado for example.
2. Count the amount of syllables from the end of the word until you reach the stress. In the case of tarado, we count 2.
3. If you counted 3 or more syllables, the word is called "esdrújula". If you counted 2, it's "grave", if you the stress is in the last syllable, it's called "aguda". "tarado" is grave.
4. If the word is esdrújula, put an accent on the stress. If it isn't, proceed to step 5.
5. Does the word end in n, s, or vowel? If yes, go to step 6a, if not, 6b
6a. Place an accent on the stress if the word is "aguda".
6b. Place an accent on the stress if the word is "grave".

tarado is grave and ends in a vowel, so it doesn't need an accent.


There are a couple of exceptions though. Día has 2 syllables (despite looking like it should only have 1), is grave and ends in a vowel. This is called a "hiato".
Those happen when a word has a stress on a closed vowel (i or u) and said closed vowel is followed or preceded by an open vowel (either a,e, or o), you have to put a tilde on the closed vowel.

Also, if you have 2 open vowels next to each other, that adds a syllable. 'reo' has 2 syllables because of the 'e' and the 'o' together.

>>77
Please make this a sticky.

Also, could you answer (or anyone) about the 'cabron' question in the other thread, por favor?

I'm glad anon started this board since /spanish/ is Castellano and the /argentino/ board is above my level..for now :).

>>78
Cabrón is not in use around my area; it's primarily used in Mexico I believe. The meanings I know are the following:
1. A person bearing ill intentions and known to cause trouble
2. alternate way to say SoB, asshole (Spain, SoB is more common regardless)
3. a swell guy, a m8 (Mexico, slang)
4. beta and/or cuck (in some countries. Yes, really, although not very common I think)

Had to Google quite a while because the dictionary definitions clash a bit with some uses in slang.

>>79
By beta I meant a cowardly guy who takes shit without standing his ground.

Still, definitions vary too wildly across countries.

>>81
Aquí tienes una explicación del sujeto táctico:
http://www.gramaticas.net/2010/10/ejemplos-de-sujeto-tacito.html
Por ejemplo :
Corrí 5 kilometros.

Por cierto conoceis esta pagina web?
http://html.rincondelvago.com/espanol-basico-para-extranjeros.html
El rincon del vago es una pagina web donde los estudiantes suben sus apuntes , ejercicios y exámenes.
Tiene toda clase de asignaturas para universitarios. (incluso español para extranjeros)

Aquí explican las tildes.
http://html.rincondelvago.com/acentuacion-y-tildacion.html

con Bibliografía y todo :D.
http://www.icarito.cl/enciclopedia/articulo/segundo-ciclo-basico/lenguaje-y-comunicacion/ortografia/2009/12/99-8751-9-ortografia-acentual.shtml

Espero que os sea útil!

>>77
>5. Does the word end in n, s, or vowel? If yes, go to step 6a, if not, 6b

Thanks again. I didn't know about this kek. I read a word with an accent whenever there are letters with an accent regardless of what you stated above.

I only took the first elementary Spanish class out of the two elementary Spanish class. It was probably taught on the second one, but it should have been discussed on the first class as the basics of the basics. I took the course in an American Community College by the way.

The class teaching method from the school I attended is a parrot kind of thing and theory on sentence structures. The first class focuses on the use of verbs, pronouns, nouns and etc. The transition to learn the language is not that big since the Filipino language helped me on the way. It has been a long time since I took it though and I haven't been polishing it.

Time to go back and reread my notes again.

>>78
By spendng time around Mexicans I have come to take cabron as meaning something like "dude" combined with "asshole". Guys say it to their friends like "man" "dude" but it seems to have an edgy side.

>>87
>Está demás decir que si no sabes usarlo, se van a dar cuenta al instante.

"Needless to say, you will realize instantly."

The literal English translations sometimes throws me off unless I think of it in my own speech, in a way. If that makes sense.

>>97
The translation is something more along the lines of
"It goes without saying that if you don't know how to use it, they'll find out (that you're a foreigner) instantly".

Notice the you and the they that appeared in the sentence. You can't omit them in English.

>>111
Está bien, metí la pata ahí.
Estaba pensando en Sudamérica más que nada cuando lo dije. No tengo forma de saber personalmente sobre Paraguay porque nunca fui y no quería comprometerme. Y los chilenos que conocí me han tuteado siempre, y que yo sepa, no usan el voseo como nosotros por ahí.

nice trips

>>112
>no usan el voseo como nosotros por ahí.
No como ustedes. Lo usamos en situaciones muy informales o para dar un tono despectivo, se usa generalmente entre la gente menos educada o de estratos más bajos. Como nosotros aspiramos las "s" al final de las sílabas, es común que suene como "vo".

>>130
I think you are just complicating yourself. If you understand some basic sentences, and what means or what is the purpose of each word of them, you might be able to get how they are composed.

OP said that "Tienes una luz" is wrong is because you are literally asking for light instead of fire, not because it's gramatically worng.

Hope I helped btw.

>>130

It's the opposite in a way, i will give you a simple example.

>spider man = araña hombre

"araña hombre" makes as much sense as "man spider" and that's why "spider man" is translated as "hombre araña" which in english it would leterally be "man spider".

Or at least that was something the made it difficult for me to understand english until i understood that, so i guess you may have the same issue.

As for "tienes una luz" there's nothing actually wrong with it, i mean if light were things like cars are then it could work, but since i don't know what's the translation duo gives i can't know what's the problem.

>>133
I get the part about putting the adjective after the noun. That's one of the easier nuances in Spanish, for me.

I'm more worried about sentences like this:
>Acabo de llevar a mi hermana a su casa.

Why do you have to say "a mi hermana" instead of "mi hermana"? To me, it's like saying "to my sister to her house"

>>136

Because you're(or anyone/anything is) doing the action TO your sister.

>>136
Don't worry bro, I used to have the same problems with English (and I still have them sometimes). As I said before, you just have to get used to the composition.

>>111
Ese uso del verbo implicar es incorrecto; en español no existe. Insinuar o sugerir son lo más cercano que tenemos.

>>130
When asking for fire to light a cig, in English you wouldn't say "Hey, do you have a fire?". That's just not how the expression works.
The correct expression is "Hey, do you have a light?".

To give you a more obvious example, I believe you're familiar with the saying "Every cloud has a silver lining".
If you translate it to Spanish, it becomes "Todas las nubes tienen un revestimiento de plata", which will get you puzzled looks at best. We use "No hay mal que por bien no venga." instead, which has essentially the same meaning as the English saying above.

>>136
>Why do you have to say "a mi hermana"
Because "mi hermana" is the direct object (the noun you're applying the action to) here and she's not an inanimate object (i.e. a person). That's the simplest explanation I can offer.

You have to realize that you can't think in English and try to construct all your sentences in Spanish with interchangeable structures, much less if you plan on passing off as a native. You'd be limiting yourself to a smaller subset of both languages, which is undesirable in the long run.

>>151
>you can't think in English and try to construct all your sentences in Spanish

How do I think in Spanish? Duolingo has me just repeating stuff over and over, and I don't feel like I'm really learning why I'm doing things.

>>152
Usually the process goes like this:

Learn stock phrases which are in common use through repetition. For example: the equivalents of the wh- questions: ¿Cómo estás?, ¿Dónde estás?, ¿Qué es eso? Repetition and exposure are prime means of absorbing and assimilating new information.

Learn some rigid structures that act as blinders to keep you from going off on tangents. The verbs ser and estar (I am/he is), tener (have/has got), haber (there is/are), hacer (do/does, make) estar+gerund (I'm verb+ing), poder (can). These verbs have plenty of uses, so don't go overboard and keep things simple.

Acquire basic vocabulary you might need in specific settings, like when you're asking for or giving directions, when you're at the movies, when writing an informal e-mail, or when ordering food at a restaurant.

Start simple. Begin with the present, then you can move on to other tenses.

After some time you'll see that there are plenty of grey areas where the situation doesn't fit any of the use cases you've learned and you'll have to open your mind some more and experiment a bit.

If you're struggling even with the most basic stuff, you might want to watch some shit for kids like Dora the Explorer (in Spanish) or something.

>I don't feel like I'm really learning why I'm doing things.
The thing is, explaining things in painstaking detail and listing every exception is very time-consuming and won't get you anywhere fast. It's better to learn rules of thumb/memorize some specific cases and leave the explanations for until you've acquired a solid base. I know it sucks, but you have to.
For example, verbs with 'se' leave plenty of people baffled. You can't just explain to a beginner that 'se' might be used either to substitute passive voice, to indicate (quasi)reflexivity, or to form impersonal sentences, nor does English have a word resembling it, so you don't always have 1:1 translations. Hence why I said you can't think in English all the time.

>How do I think in Spanish?
What I meant by thinking in Spanish was to avoid translating word for word from English to Spanish. Furthermore, some structures don't lend themselves well to translations.

Compare:
Que yo quise decir por pensando en español fue para evitar traduciendo palabra por palabra desde inglés a español. Además, algunas estructuras no prestan sí mismas bien para traducciones.
Lo que quise decir con pensar en español fue que evites traducir palabra por palabra del inglés al español. Además, algunas estructuras no se traducen bien.

>>154
>If you're struggling even with the most basic stuff, you might want to watch some shit for kids like Dora the Explorer (in Spanish) or something.

I use Plaza Sésamo and episodes of Card Captor Sakura with Spanish subs :^)