Job Discussion Forums

[MikeyG]

I'm shocked, 'it' doesn't exist in Spanish! I never realized. How to explain 'it'?

[M@tt]

i'm shocked by how many ESL learners confuse he and she. has anyone else noticed this? it seems to be across the board. arabs, asians, hispanohablantes...

monday i was having a conversation in english with a girl who is basically fluent, and she repeatedly refered to her female roommates as "he". what is it about these two words that makes them so confusing? in speaking spanish and french, i'm 99% sure i never make that particular mistake.

[Guy Courchesne]

Not too difficult I think. First, Spanish-speakers need to know that English cannot drop the pronoun. "It's blue" is 'es azul" in Spanish. It meaning a car or something. I'd write up on the board two phrases.

"The car is blue"
"It's blue"

Then I'd write the two Spanish phrases.

"El coche es azul"
"Es azul"

I'd tell the students that when referring to objects, or places, but not people, it is used, when you don't want or need to use the noun.

It gets trickier when you write a phrase like this sentence I just wrote, where it nows introduces not a solid object, but an idea. Here, Spanish will sometimes use the reflexive pronoun (if I have that termed right) se in front of a verb. "It gets trickier" could be said as 'se vuevla mas dificil.'

You can also use the articles la and lo. 'Do it now.' would be said as "Hazlo ahora"

That's about as far as I got with it in Spanish...I'm sure there are more rules that someone can help explain.

[Guy Courchesne]

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[Guy Courchesne]

My favorite is 'se me hace raro'. Word for word, 'it makes me strange', though it really means 'it strikes me as odd' or 'I find it strange'.

Se me hace raro que no se puede hacer bien una traduccion de 'it'. Pues, asi es la cosa guey.

[MikeyG]

Muchas gracias..pues 'lo/a' y 'ello/a' no son exactamente iguales que 'it. �Como se llama el libro de Stephen King en Espa�ol entonces?

[cwc]

MikeyG, How have you spoken Spanish without the famous �damelo�? I would call King�s book, �Ello�. I think �Aquello�would do nicely also. Is my English OK? Please note that only the newbies attack someone�s English here. Nobody speaks or writes perfectly at all times. The point is to communicate, not grade or be graded.

[Guy Courchesne]

Aquello? Would that be 'that'?

Quick google search reveals the Stephen King book in question used the English title "It' when it was published in Spanish.

I would've called it 'cosa'.

[hlamb]

My students tell me they know the Stephen King book as "Eso".

[M@tt]

i was so bummed that "thing" from the fantastic 4 was not translated as "cosa" in the spanish version. honestly, people!!!

[lozwich]

I actually think there are more words for 'it' in Spanish than in English, and am always surprised when they don't get it...

There's the masculine and feminine articles (el, la, etc), and the lo and ello for (according to one of my grammar books from Spain) the non-specific uses. Although this book also says that they are not used anymore, only for old-fashioned Spanish grammar. Wonder what Latin America has to say about that....

[MikeyG]

This is getting tedious cwc...let it go. If you'll remember this all began when, for some reason you sent me some petty remarks detailing other posters' sexual preferences and then claimed the word 'acclimatizing' doesn't exist. I only answered because I'm confrontational at 8am.
Please don't send me any more PMs, I don't know you.

[cwc]

MikeyG, Why would a little PM upset you? Grow up and accept the fact that we all have different opinions. Confrontational at 8 AM? I pity your significant other, your students and your co-workers. Of course we don�t know each other, fool.

[M@tt]

please, whoever you people are, stop annoying the rest of us.