Thoughts on the Spanish Language

glennmagusharvey

Since I've been posting these in the general category for a while now but they're sorta consistent enough that I might as well make a thread for them.

Now those of you Spanish-speakers can find a place to mock me more easily!

Anyway, let's start with my latest thought, which concerns, not surprisingly, anime.

[01:12:08] i find it interesting how Spanish has that accent on the second to last syllable and it´s considered the wrong one for japanese
[01:13:46] but yeah there´s that one scene in YuGiOh Abridged
[01:13:53] where LittleKuriboh purposely dubbed it over with spanish
[01:14:05] i´m not sure if it´s original spanish or his own reading
[01:14:11] but one of the lines is
[01:14:22] ¨ES BAKURA¨
[01:14:30] then again even in english they accent the Ku
[01:14:54] it was funny since i used to call a certain two anime characters nah-ROO-toe and sah-KOO-rah
[01:14:58] and was immediately corrected, of course
[01:15:16] at least in Spanish they could be indicated as ¨Náruto¨ and ¨Sákura¨
[01:15:32] then again on the internets half the time spanish-speakers don´t even use accent marks
[01:16:21] sometimes even ñ becomes n

Incidentally I am now wondering how "anime" is pronounced in Spanish...as "ánime" or "aníme".  Apparently that word is also a present subjunctive form of the verb "animar", so it's not like that spelling didn't already exist in the language, the way it was new to English.

glennmagusharvey

And apparently "chica mágica" is slightly more popular (1.1 million search results) than "niña mágica" (about 9##K search results).

Stormtroper

That's because "chica mágica" = magical girl, while "niña mágica" = magical (female) child.

Although it's wrong, the version I hear most often is "animé". Also, anime (i.e. with the accent in the ni) means polystyrene.

I know in (continental) Spanish dubs Bakura, Naruto and Sakura (from Sakura Card Captors) have their accents on their second syllabe, as would be intuitive if they were Spanish words.

Also despite the originally-there accent mark, Pokémon has its accent on the "mon".

Noimporta

Never have seen it not said as "animé", except by Chileans and Mexicans, who are Ameriboos.

glennmagusharvey

Stormtroper wrote: »

That's because "chica mágica" = magical girl, while "niña mágica" = magical (female) child.

Oh, that would make sense.

Stormtroper wrote: »

Although it's wrong, the version I hear most often is "animé". Also, anime (i.e. with the accent in the ni) means polystyrene.

still accurate
*ba-dum TSSH*

Stormtroper wrote: »

Also despite the originally-there accent mark, Pokémon has its accent on the "mon".

And English puts the accent on the Po.  Despite the first English theme song putting the accent on the ké.  To be fair, the accent mark seems to be used like a French accent mark to indicate the type of vowel sound rather than to indicate a stressed syllable -- it was probably there to tell English speakers to not pronounce it as "poke mon" (as in rhyming with "coke Jon").  Though it sounds like that when pronounced fast anyway...

Stormtroper

^^ Speaking of which, the only time I've heard the word "weeaboo", it was as "güiabo".

glennmagusharvey

Apparently Spanish handles present participle phrases as adverbs?  Or something like that.  For example:

Dicho proyecto tiene como meta evaluar el estado de la cobertura forestal de Costa Rica para el año 2005 empleando tecnología satelital.

Wiktionary says that "empleando" as an adverb (or technically an adverbial present participle), which makes me start to wonder how English handles them.

I guess it's technically an adverb since it's modifying "evaluar", which is a verb in infinitive form.  In English, the present participle noun form "evaluating" could be used, which is I think called a gerund form, though saying "to evaluate" isn't grammatically incorrect either, so I perhaps I was thinking too anglocentrically when I expected "using" to be an adjective since it'd be modifying a noun.  Though if I recall correctly, Spanish can also have verb infinitives as nouns...

Edit: Wiktionary calls "empleando" a gerund, so I'm probably just not fully understanding the meaning of "gerund".  Though I guess the significance of this for my learning spanish is asking whether "empleando" should be declined (if it's an adjective) or not declined (if it's an adverb).

glennmagusharvey

It's interesting how useful it is to know all this stuff about conjugations in tenses and moods and such and noun-adjective agreement and other linguistic concepts, which I would have taken for granted if I only knew English but I really started paying attention to in high school when I learned Latin.

Sure, Latin is a dead language, except in the Vatican and various texts.  But it turns out, what I was learning in high school was less the language itself but more so the study of linguistics.  By learning a foreign language, I was forced to confront how different languages work in different ways, handling idiomatic constructions and varying meanings of prepositions and verb tenses and such.

And knowing that has actually really helped me in picking up Spanish now.  The vocabulary is different, but the way I can think about things -- such as the notion of equating a gerund in English with an infinitive form of the verb -- really helps.

To be fair, I already did know a non-English language -- I've grown up speaking Cantonese as well.  And to some extent I realized things about this when learning grammar as a child, and when attempting to translate between the two languages, such as noting that Chinese has no plurals and no verb conjugations.

Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I grew up learning one language that's SOV word order (subject object verb) as well as English (which is SVO order).  That said, Latin often does conventionally use SOV (and sometimes OSV), despite word order technically not being very meaningful.

vandro

Me and my friends say "ánime", I did say NaRUto and SaKUra back then when I was in highschool.

Also, spanish does allow for SOV more consistently than english, and in some sentences, it's obligatory. "Yo Te Amo" being the most classic.

gerunds cannot be declined.

Noimporta

>Me and my friends say "ánime", I did say NaRUto and SaKUra back then when I was in highschool.

As expected of a glorified American colony

Stormtroper

For somebody into language learning, you'd think I'd know more about linguistics, grammatical structures, etc., but no, I can only remember it all until it becomes intuitive, then forget about the more formal stuff.

^

> Spanish thread

> Referring to the US as "America".

Noimporta

>Speaking in English

>Not referring to the US as "America"

I'm not a Burgeristan fan, but no need to go all Commie on us.

vandro

I'll never forget the formal stuff, I hated watching my peers forget it every school year.

glennmagusharvey

What do y'all Spanish-speakers think of the so-called "Oxford comma" -- i.e. the comma before the conjunction that precedes the last item in a list of three or more items?

It's sort of an ongoing debate in English, but apparently Spanish doesn't use it at all.

Stormtroper

On second thought, animé should be the correct version as that's how the original French word goes.

^ I've never thought of it. I've always used the "Oxford comma" and haven't had it pointed out to me. Coincidentially today I transcribed a document that used it once and ignored it like four times.

glennmagusharvey

I've always used the "Oxford comma" and haven't had it pointed out to me.

Even in Spanish?

Stormtroper

I mean in Spanish, yeah.

vandro

Can you guys give an example of an oxford comma?

Stormtroper

The planeteers' powers are earth, fire, wind, water, and heart.

That last comma is an oxford comma.

vandro

It's fucking ugly, and bad grammar, in spanish at least.

glennmagusharvey

current thought: mostrar (to show) vs. muestrear (to sample, a word that apparently comes from mostrar anyway)

vandro wrote: »

It's fucking ugly, and bad grammar, in spanish at least.

Yeah I'd gotten the sense that it's not done in Spanish, but it's much more common in English.  I personally like it in English because it matches the rhythm of my saying a list of three or more items out loud.  But I don't know Spanish so I don't exactly have a basis to say what should or shouldn't go, so I'll take it as is.

Noimporta

>oxford comma

Fuck that shit with a rusty rake, it's ugly as fuck.

Nyktos

i hear people who don't use the oxford comma only brush their teeth once a day, pass it on

Stormtroper

I like it, too. It makes the text read as it's said.

vandro

GET OUT!

glennmagusharvey

So what's the Spanish perspective on double negatives?

Because I just found this.

Esto implica que aproximadamente 393,000 has, o el 78.1 % del total de la Región Chorotega, se encuentra sin ningún tipo de protección o estimulo para su conservación.

My emphasis.

Stormtroper

Most of the time, double negatives are mandatory.

glennmagusharvey

But meanwhile...

No fue posible adquirir imágenes libres de cobertura de nubes y tan siquiera las fotografía aéreas del Proyecto CARTA se libraron de este problema.

I guess the double negatives are making up for the mysteriously missing negatives elsewhere.

Noimporta

That's just a an oddly phrased statement, "ni siquiera" would've been much clearer.

Stormtroper

I couldn't tell if that statement was trying to say "ni siquiera" or "apenas".

vandro

Double negatives are usually mandatory because the preposition must agree with the  negative adjective.