Spanish Word of the Day

As in previous examples the past participle form, "moteado" which functions as an adjective is far more commonly used than the verb.



GRAMMER STOP: A participle in grammatical sense is a cognate of the English word participation and it means a form of a verb that "partakes or shares", of the nature of both a noun and an adjective.

The three participles are the infinitive, present participle, and past participle. In English the present participle is never irregular, but always ends with "-ing". The past and past participle both regularly end with "-ed", but all the most common verbs are irregular. Look at conjugation of irregular verbs in English.

In English and Spanish the past participle can function as an adjective.

In English the infinitive and present participle can function as a noun. In Spanish the present participle can NEVER be a noun. It is one of the most common mistakes. For example you can say "Reading is fun" or "To read is fun" in English and they are both understandable, but the first one is more common. In Spanish you can only say the translation of "To read is fun". The literal translation of "reading is fun" is incomprehensible in Spanish.

Fecha: 21-11-12 (a palindome!)
Palabra: Atosigar

Today's SWD means to pester/bother.

The assignment for the advanced readers is to compare and contrast atosigar y molestar.

¡No puedo reparar la radio cuando eres atosigarme! = I'm not able to fix the radio while you're bothering me!

p.s. Why is it LA radiO?

¡Feliz dia de las gracias todos!

Quote: Wizard

The assignment for the advanced readers is to compare and contrast atosigar y molestar.

Easy. The former is a term used only by journalists and lawyers trying to impress you with their erudition. The other is a common word.

Quote:

¡No puedo reparar la radio cuando eres atosigarme! = I'm not able to fix the radio while you're bothering me!

"I can't fix da radio when you are being bothering me"?

Quote:

p.s. Why is it LA radiO?

It's not. Yes, they do say so in many places in South America and Spain, but it's clearly EL radio. That's why I mocked you by saying "da radio" above ;)

Anyway: No puedo reparar EL radio cuando me estás atosigando.

Quote: Wizard

¡Feliz dia de las gracias todos!

Sorry, I can't pass that up...

You said, literally "Happy day of thank you all."

For some reason, Thanksgiving is translated as "Día de Acción de Gracias." I don't know if that's right or not, or what "acción" means in this context. So the expression "Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!" is "¡Feliz Día de Acción de gracias A todos!"

Quote: Wizard

The assignment for the advanced readers is to compare and contrast atosigar y molestar.

The word "atosigar" is a cognate with the "tussin" which means to cough. Related to the idea of poisoning. The word "molestar" has no connotation of poisoning.


Incidentally "molestar" does not mean to sexually assault. That meaning in English only became common after WWII.

Quote: Nareed

The former is a term used only by journalists and lawyers trying to impress you with their erudition. The other is a common word.

Thanks. Based on my experience reading a lot of classic books in English translated into Spanish I think the transtors often choose to use words like atosigar. I'm not sure if people actually talk like that wherever the translator is from, or they are just talking down to the audience. During my tutoring sessions when I come across a word like that my tutor won't know it either.

I am genuinely pulling my hair out trying to find a fun and efficient way to improve my Spanish. It shoudln't be this hard. There should be more books by good translators like Joe Hayes out there. How is the rest of the world getting past beginner Spanish?

Quote: Wizard

Thanks. Based on my experience reading a lot of classic books in English translated into Spanish I think the transtors often choose to use words like atosigar. I'm not sure if people actually talk like that wherever the translator is from, or they are just talking down to the audience. During my tutoring sessions when I come across a word like that my tutor won't know it either.

Word frequency lists are developed and heavily researched in English by Oxford. They tend to be very well organized by "lemma" so that "am, is, are, were, was, and being" are all organized under "be". In English 100 lemmas and their "lexemes" (variations) constitute 50% of the words in written English language.

Spanish frequency lists are not as well organized from what I have seen, they tend to list every conjugation separately.

That said, you can check a word in at least the most common 10,000 words. It isn't perfect but you can identify the most common words like "molesta" as a conjugation of "molestar" being among the top 2000. I couldn't even find conjugations "atosigar" in the top 100K (I may have missed it).

Spanish frequency list

Fecha: 23-11-12
Palabra: adinerarse

I was recently taken to task for using an adjective in my ejemplo, when the actual SWD was a verb. As was mentioned at the time, Spanish conventiently often comes with related noun/verb/adjective sets based on the same root.

Take for example today's SWD. Every gringo knows that dinero means money. However, how many know that there is also adinerarse for to get rich, and of course adinerado for rich as an adjective. Meanwhile in English we have money, rich, and wealthy, which don't seem to share a common root at all.

Ejemplo time.

¿Como puso adinerarse Sr. Howell de todos modos? = How did Mr. Howell get rich anyway?

Quote:

I am genuinely pulling my hair out trying to find a fun and efficient way to improve my Spanish.

You should ride the RTC buses more! I am improving my Spanish based on the coach announcements:

El transporto publico del RTC funcionaran in horario del Domingo el dia de accion de gracias.

I can say that (horribly spelled, I'm sure) in a perfect accent now. :)