English language learning tips for students attending Spanish High Schools: 2011

jueves, 24 de noviembre de 2011

Singular or Plural?

As students of the English language, we often come across words like "People", "Police", "The news", "Everybody", "Everything" etc. However, grammar may drive us nuts when trying to translate sentences such as "La gente está feliz", "La policía es buena para la sociedad", "las noticias son a las 3", "Todo el mundo vive en casa" o "Todo está controlado" into English. This is probably one of the trickiest aspects of this beautiful language apart from the agreement between a subject and a verb, which is a real nightmare for certain students until one day they realise how to sort it out and really learn the trick. So, "People is happy" is not correct because some students mistakenly translate "people" as "gente". They should associate people to "las personas" so as to express the right agreement with the verb. Therefore, "People are happy" is correct. Similarly, the word "police" on its own cannot be translated as "la policía". I suggest you translating it as "los policías", "las policías" or as both of them if you want to include both genders. In other words, from a grammatical point of view, we should enclose the number of persons individually within each word rather than considering both as a whole unit.

To carry on with this crazy thing, I would like to point out the noun "news" (not to be confused with the adjective "new"). This word is special, as it betrays us from a grammar outlook in sentences like "the news are at 3 o'clock". Watch out!! "the news" are not "las noticias", but "el conjunto de noticias". If I am interested in finding out about what is going on in the world, I could say to myself: "the news is at 3. I am going to turn the television on and watch it".

On the contrary, one may think that "everybody" or "todo el mundo"in Spanish is considered as a third person plural subject. But this is not true. Examples like: "Everybody are in Madrid" are wrong. This leads us to the fact that, in this case, our natural translation into our mother tongue does not betray us from a grammar focus. Let us just say:"Everybody is in Madrid" and think that this sentence is spot on. A happy ending for an awkward linguistic aspect. So, good luck and take it in. It's definitely worth it!!

To sum up:

People - las personas

Police - los/las policías or both of them

The news - el conjunto de noticias

Everybody - todo el mundo

Everything - todo

jueves, 17 de noviembre de 2011

Weather expressions. Without a doubt, false friends sometimes make us laugh.

It's nearly the end of November and it's getting chilly. Spanish people say "Estoy cogiendo un constipado". In English, the word "constipated"already exists. However, it does not mean what everybody thinks it does at first sight. It refers to a problem of certain people who have a desperate need to go to the toilet but they can't due to a physiological problem called "constipation". Would you like to look it up in the dictionary and find out? You will probably have a laugh! So the right translation is "I'm getting a cold" instead of "I'm getting constipated".

On the other hand, Spanish learners of English get three expressions confused: "Tengo frío" is not the same as "I have a cold". The latter means "Tengo un resfriado" and "Tengo frío" is translated as "I'm cold", thus using the verb "to be". "Hace frío" or "It's cold" does not need the verb " to do" as the subject of the sentence is "it", referring to the weather itself. So "It does cold" is wrong in English. An interesting way of paraphrasing "It's cold" would be "The weather is cold".