Spanish Word of the Day

Quote: Pacomartin

Is that what you are talking about?

Do you think that's what I'm talking about?

But, no. That's not it. Do think about it. It's not a major feat to find out what I do mean, as I did scatter several clues (I did, I really did).

While we're on it, another largely menaingless word is "going." Really, tell me whether this sounds odd: "You've been invited to a party. Are you going to go?"

Quote: Nareed

About the oddity of English, do you realize a great big portion of English sentences are loaded with a maningless word? Did you know this? Do you know what word I'm talking about?

One of the tricks to speed reading is to ignore all these meaningless words. A significant percentage don't convey actual meaning but are used only to hold the pertinent words together. It is my understanding that Japanese and Chinese just about zero "meaningless words."

Quote: Nareed

Do you think that's what I'm talking about?

Spanish doesn't have an equivalent to the use of do in questions, negative statements, and negative commands.

Actually, that was my second choice for a meaningless word. The verb "do" is pretty useless. Greetings like "How do you do?" convey almost no meaning. Somewhere in the transition from Old to Middle English the language inserted the word "do" in place of negative participles like "Do not go to the fair".

They would always teach us that the most useful translation of "to do" is hacer.

Quote: Pacomartin

Spanish doesn't have an equivalent to the use of do in questions, negative statements, and negative commands.

According to McWorther, no other language has it, except Welsh and Cornish

Quote:

Actually, that was my second choice for a meaningless word. The verb "do" is pretty useless. Greetings like "How do you do?" convey almost no meaning.

That's a good one. The phrase conveys meaning. In Spanish I'd say "Como te va?"* But if I were translating it back to English, I'd probably wind up with "How are you doing?"

The meaningless "do" gave me a lot of trouble. It usually does to a lot of other people. I recall someone trying to use it and coming up with "How did do you do on the test?" Even then I found it funny. Of course, if you were to say "How you did on the test?" or "How did you on the test?" you'd sound really odd.

So one just accepts that English sentences carry a meaningless word often.

Quote:

They would always teach us that the most useful translation of "to do" is hacer.

When it has meaning, it is (sometimes). But consider a literal translation of "How do you do?" would be "Como haces tu haces?" is pure gibberish.

*please don't say anything about the question marks. I tend to ignore the "opening" question mark in Spanish enough to give the Word grammar check fits.

Quote: Nareed

So one just accepts that English sentences carry a meaningless word often.

An interesting word is quite. It has two distinctly British English meanings. (1) A somewhat archaic use is as an abbreviation for "quite a gentleman" . If you said the guest is "not quite", you were implying a lack of breeding. (2) It is famous British exclamation meaning "absolutely". I think that is fading from common use as well.

The word is ultimately derived from the Latin word quietus which is the ancestor of Spanish words : quedo & quieto . The Latin word is also an ancestor of the English word quiet.

But in both American and British English the word "quite" has acquired three different primary meanings over the centuries. All three are in common usage, but sometimes they can be confused. Although all meanings are possible, the British are more apt to favor one meaning over another.

When someone says "the dinner was quite good", how do you take their meaning?

I have quite a few bilingual books and it seems to me that it takes about the same number of letters to convey the same story in English as Spanish.

I like Mcworther's book so much, I've even delayed listening to the newest episode in The History of Byzantium (successor to The History of Rome).

While some languages are more verbose than others, sometimes the verbose language will ahve a more concise way of expressing certain things. So while English tends to be more concise in many respects (and tends to have shroter words), Spanish has more concise ways of saying things like "I went to the store" = "Fuí a la tienda." Besides, in books there are many ways to play with paragraph shapes to make them take up more or less space than needed. If there are illustrations as well, that gives even greater scope.

Quote: Nareed

Spanish has more concise ways of saying things like "I went to the store" = "Fuí a la tienda."

It's an interesting coincidence that "to go" in the past tense uses the conjugation of an entirely different verb that is almost never used anymore: "to wend". I believe that it is the one of only two verbs in English (along with "to be") that mixes more than one verb together.

The coincidence, is that it is one of the only verbs in Spanish that mixes different verbs together to form the different tenses.

Infinitivo-- to go: ir
Gerundio-- going: yendo
Participio-- gone: ido

Presente del indicativo-- I go, you go, etc.: yo voy, tú vas, usted/él/ella va, nosotros/as vamos, vosotros/as vais, ustedes/ellos/ellas van

Pretérito-- I went, you went, etc.: yo fui, tu fuiste, usted/él/ella fue, nosotros/as fuimos, vosotros/as fuisteis, ustedes/ellos/ellas fueron

Imperfecto del indicativo-- I used to go, you used to go, etc.: yo iba, tú ibas, usted/él/ella iba, nosotros/as íbamos, vosotros/as ibais, ustedes/ellos/ellas iban

Condicional-- I would go, you would go, etc.:yo iría, tú irías, usted/él/ella iría, nosotros/as iríamos, vosotros/as iríais, ustedes/ellos/ellas irían

Presente del subjuntivo-- that I go, that you go, etc.: que yo vaya, que tú vayas, que usted/él/ella vaya, que nosotros/as vayamos, que vosotros/as vayáis, que ustedes/ellos/ellas vayan

Quote: Pacomartin

It's an interesting coincidence that "to go" in the past tense uses the conjugation of an entirely different verb that is almost never used anymore: "to wend". I believe that it is the one of only two verbs in English (along with "to be") that mixes more than one verb together.

BTW, one reason Romance languages and other Indo-European languages are so hard for English speakers to learn, it seems, is that the conjugations are compeltely different (and in the specific case of Romance languages, too many). McWorther comes up with an idea out of left field, going by having many words starting with t, s, and th, as well as there being many orphan words in English and Proto-Germanic related to the sea, and as regards conjugations, that Proto-Germanic,a dn hence English, was influenced early on by, wait for it, an old Semitic or Proto-Semitic language (wow! that's a long sentence).

He has just enough evidence in his arguments to speculate with. In any case, he thinks the language was <drumroll> Carthaginian, which is a subset of Phoenician, which happens to be closely related to Old/Biblical Hebrew.

So the question then would be: how hard is it for English speakers to learn Old Hebrew or Aramaic? I'm guessing pretty hard.

Well Old English had more conjugations, but never as many as Latin. Take the verb "faran" or "to travel". The verb travel from French replaced the Old English verb faran, but the root ended up in many common English words (fare, farewell, welfare, seafaring, wayfarer, ...)

Conjugation of travel is completely regular
Infinitive: "to travel"
Past Participle: traveled (travelled in BrE)
Present participle: traveling ( travelling in BrE)

I/you/we/they travel
he travels
I traveled in the past
=================
In Old English you would conjugate as follows

Infinitive: faran
Past Participle: gefæren; gefaren
Present participle: farende

Present
ic fare
þū færst; færest
hē færþ; færeþ
wē faraþ
gē faraþ
hīo faraþ

Past
ic fōr
þū fōre
hē fōr
wē fōron
gē fōron
hīo fōron

Remember English had a familiar conjugation like Spanish up until a few hundred years ago. In Old English you (familiar) was "þū" but in early modern English it was "thou".