Talk:Spanish grammar/Archive 1

Tenses

In Spain "I saw you yesterday" is said te he visto ayer, and in Latin America it is te vi ayer.

In Spain, you wouldn't use he visto with ayer. It's a matter of aspect, I think.

Maybe What did she say? = ¿Qué ha dicho?/¿Qué dijo?.

--- In fact, it is not a matter of aspect; both "he visto" (called the "pretérito perfecto")and "vi" (the "pretérito indefinido") are perfective past forms. The difference is much more of a time frame.

"Ví" is used when the action happened in a lapse of time that it's already gone, so is used with words like "el año pasado" ("last year"), "la semana pasada" ("last week"), or "ayer" ("yesterday"). "He visto" is used when the lapse of time is still going on: "este año" ("this year"), "hoy" ("today"), etc. The only exception is when the time lapse is smaller than a day: "te he visto esta mañana" ("I saw you this morning", even when the morning is gone, but the day is still not finished).

So, we would say "¿Qué ha dicho?" is she said something just a moment ago, or this morning, or at some time before the day ends, and "¿Qué dijo?" if that happened yestarday.

In any case, the "pretérito perfecto" can be used when the perception of the current period of time has not yet ended; so you can say "siempre he dicho..." ("I've always said..."), since the period of time is asumed to be your lifetime, which has not ended yet. XC 13:47, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I shall incorporate all these verb issues into the article, probably tomorrow. Chameleon 13:26, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Sustantivos ambiguos

I'm not and expert in linguistics but as spanish native speaker i doubt 'ázucar is a good example of an ambiguous substantive.

The article says that a vacilant substantive has not definied gender. But for me, azucar is belongs to female gender. If you put an adjetive to azúcar, you have to decline in its female form: el azúcar rubiA, azúcar refinadA. I've never heard azúcar rubiO, azúcar refinadO, and for me it seems the use of the article el is to avoid cacofonía on some female susbtantives article that begin with and a (ha).(el hacha está oxidadA).

Baloo rch 17:55, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Azúcar Moreno is a popular music duo in Spain.

I checked my shelves and sugar is labelled "azúcar blanco", but "azúcar blanquilla" seems a trade term.

Maybe mar or aceite are better examples.

-- Error 00:35, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree, mar is definitevely a better example. I'm not sure (the article is very extense) but i think that the use of el article with female substantive is not explained.

From memory, the el in el agua is not the same as in el brazo. It is an dissimilated form from the old female article ela. -- Error 01:44, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Another thing: The word suBstantivo(like I wrote in the section title) is the traditional form of the word. In modern spanish (~1980-)all (most of them at least) the bs were replaced by 's'. If you see the RAE definition of substantivo you'll find 1. adj. sustantivo. U. t. c. s.

Baloo rch 14:15, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ú.t.c.s. means Úsase también como sustantivo. So according to DRAE, substantivo may be a noun but sustantivo is an adjective. Whatever. -- Error 01:44, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No, it's not the traditional form of that word. I checked the DRAE for substantivo and yes, I did found that. But check the entry on sustantivo and you'll find:

1. adj. Que tiene existencia real, independiente, individual.

2. adj. Importante, fundamental, esencial.

3. m. Gram. nombre sustantivo.

Therefore, the use of sustantivo as an adjective does NOT correspond to the sustantivo you are referring to (that is, "noun"). And, since substantivo is an adjective, again according to the RAE, it does not mean "noun".

By the way, I think "azúcar" is a good example of ambiguous substantive (yes, in English it's allowed). Just like you, I'm no linguist, but I do speak Spanish. And I know that the "el" article before feminine nouns is used only before stressed /a/ ("el hacha rota" but "la arveja podrida"). The /a/ in "azúcar" is not stressed, so the "el" is not explained by that rule.

And regarding "aceite" and "mar", I've never heard "la aceite" except on this page, and "la mar" only in poetical contexts.

From memory, sea workers say la mar. Secano varieties use el mar. -- Error 01:44, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

--Fibonacci 05:44, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)

azúcar is a better example than mar because it's more vacillant. Everybody agrees that it's recursos del mar (3400 in Google) and recursos de la mar is almost never used (7 times in Google).

See the following data from Google in Spanish:

azúcar-rubio 239, azúcar rubia 858
azúcar refinado 1830, azúcar refinada 3910
con-azúcar-blanco 43, con-azúcar-blanca 172
azúcar-negro 16, azúcar-negra 161
nuestro-azúcar 116, nuestra-azúcar 110
ese-azúcar 255 esa-azúcar 106
azúcar-barato 39 azúcar-barata 44

control group

con-algodón-blanco 15 con-algodón-blanca 0
con-algodón-negro 2 con-algodón-negra 0
nuestro-algodón 182, nuestra-algodón 0
ese-algodón 126 esa-algodón 0
algodón-barato 76 algodón-barata 4 (falda de algodón barata)

I have now incorporated all vacillant-gender issues into the article. Chameleon 13:26, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Move

Grammar of the Spanish language is redundant. Moving to [[Spanish grammar]. Nohat 20:40, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good. Chameleon 13:26, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Rewrite

Hang on everyone. I'm doing a massive rewrite of this entire article at the moment. Chameleon 21:26, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've finished my edits for now. Chameleon 23:33, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've added a to-do list for this article. Chameleon 13:26, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Barcelona hermoso

I'd never say Barcelona es hermoso. Proper nouns ending in -a are (always?) feminine. Except rivers like el Plata.

It seems counterintuitive, but I have been asked in Barcelona, Barcelona es bonito, ¿no? and this is confirmed by my grammar textbook (ISBN 0340583908). Chameleon 15:07, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There is the popular saying Barcelona és bona si la bolsa sona. I know it's Catalan and not Spanish, but I think the rules don't differ in this case.

That's not Spanish, and there is also the issue of the rhyme: bó wouldn't go with sona. Chameleon 15:51, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I just remembered a counterexample. You say Nueva Granada, Nueva Zelanda, Pequeña Habana, China Roja, el África Negra (el is feminine here); and Nuevo León, Nuevo México, el Brasil. What I don't know is why Nueva York is feminine.

After reading againt the article, what I said is fairly redundant. Anyway I'd move down "everything masculine". I doubt it's the dominant usage.

As the article states, Nueva York is feminine because ciudad is feminine. This doesn't apply to México/Méjico, Brasil or León, which furthermore have typical masculine endings. Chameleon 15:50, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

To nitpick, León was a city and a kingdom.

Mexico is also a city, but I knew that and it is beside the point. Chameleon 16:27, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Spanish verbs

The verb section was getting very big, so I've moved it out to Spanish verbs. Chamaeleon 12:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Relative pronouns

We've just had a request on the talk page of the article relative pronoun for information on these pronouns in Spanish. If they are as complicated as was suggested, they would be very interesting for this comparative article. Anyone here up to doing it? (Perhaps do it briefly there and have a fuller version here?)--Doric Loon 19:00, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'll write a full explanation here and you can put a summary at relative pronoun. Chamaeleon 19:25, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Update

I've changed a little the explanation on determining gender from endings, as I found that the explanation given there was somehow misleading. Words ending in o are allways masculine with only three exceptions (mano, nao and seo), of wich only mano is a commonly used word. I've written the section "Direct object le-les" but I feel its title should be change to "Use of le-les" or something like that. Finally I've also written the list of prepositions and a small text to go with it. Anconor.

Branching

OK, you might have noticed that I wrote most of this. For a long time, I've been intending to finish it, and I'm going to do so now. We have already farmed out several sections Spanish verbs, Spanish verb paradigm, etc and I think the time has come to create separate articles for every aspect of Spanish grammar. Don't worry, they won't be stubs. I am going to write a huge amount on each one. — Chameleon 21:45, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cleft sentences

There are a couple of things I can not assure are not right, but I believe they are not:

• Fue a mí a quien me dio permiso. ) should be ( Fue a mí a quien le dio permiso.
• Fue Juan el que perdió las llaves ) could also be ( Fue Juan quien perdió las llaves

• Es para nosotros para los que se hizo esto.

I've never heard a structure like this, though it seams grammatically correct, though I would rather say

Es para nosotros para quien se hizo esto.

Es para nosotros que se hizo esto. (which I consider the preferable among all) is later said to be uneducated and not advisable, a thought I don't share.

Grammar is so back behind in history that I might fall for normal missuse of the language. Can anyone check this out? --Mariano 07:15, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)