Thoughts on the Spanish Language

glennmagusharvey

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=La chancla

La chancla

the thing that causes PTSD and traumitizes young latin kids.

mom:PORQUE REPROVASTE EL EXAMEN???
kid: porque...
mom: NI QUE POQUE NI QUE OCHO CUARTOS VENTE ACA
kid: AHHH LA CHANCLA NO PORFAVORRRR....
and then the poor kid gets his ass whipped. and now has PTSD

I am having a little trouble parsing the mom's second line. "Vente acá" is clear, and presumably the "ni...ni..." is "neither...nor...", but... "ocho cuartos"?

Stormtroper

"Ni qué X ni qué Y", where X is something you're responding to and Y is some "dismissive word" (e.g. "carajo" or "vaina"), is a dismissive remark against X. That line could be replaced by "stfu com here".
Also, cringe.

glennmagusharvey

Is the following grammatically correct Spanish?

¿Compró una mitad de uno pato asado?

(Did [formal/respectful] you buy half a roast duck?)

If so, how would this differ from a non-question? Is it just the speaking tone or punctuation in writing, or is there something about the word order I didn't get?

Stormtroper

Almost forgot to reply.
It should be un pato asado.
Regardless, it sounds awkward, I'd say it as "¿Compró medio pato asado?" or at least "¿Compro una mitad de pato asado?". Dunno why.

glennmagusharvey

Oh oops, I should have known to use "un" rather than "uno".

And I'm guessing it probably sounds too stiff?

Using "half" as a noun in a situation like this seems to be more natural in English. But that's just idiomatic of English and evidently not Spanish.

(It kinda sounds that way even in Chinese, or maybe that's only because that's how I'm used to thinking of it, because in Chinese that's because quantities are always stated as [number] [unit] [main noun].)



Meanwhile, I discovered a song I really like. It started by running across this piano piece by Ernesto Lecuona:

...which turns out to be some sort of popular/folk(?) song (possibly written by Lecuona himself) called "En la noche perfumada". Here's a good version of it with actual singing.



The song is labeled as an "estudiantina" and I keep on seeing performers of it being labeled as "Tuna", e.g. "Tuna Javeriana", "Tuna Universitaria de Madrid", "Tuna Derecho Málaga".

Turns out that "tuna" refers to a singing group at a university, and "estudiantina" can refer to that, or to a song they sing. And this song is pretty well known among them.

glennmagusharvey

And apparently "tuna" can also refer to the prickly pear cactus, or its fruit, or its edible pads (nopal).

The one thing it isn't is the "tuna" fish in English, which is "atún" in Spanish.

glennmagusharvey

And to make things worse, "tunar" means to loaf, not to tune (an instrument).

(source: Wiktionary)

glennmagusharvey

preterite expulsé expulsaste expulsó expulsamos expulsasteis expulsaron
future expulsaré expulsarás expulsará expulsaremos expulsaréis expulsarán

Interesting: the preterite is characterized by an accent on the verb's characteristic stem vowel's syllable, while the future is characterized by an accent on the syllable after that. (Assuming this is a regularly-conjugated verb.)

(this post was inspired by a thread on the Steam forum entitled "me expulsaron", which was pretty obvious to what it might mean lol)

glennmagusharvey

ahh, nothing like a meme to teach me language

alto = "stop!" (interjection)
ahí = there
pana = buddy (slang)

alto ahí pana: a meme
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/alto-ahi-pana

Stormtroper

ahí = here

You probably already know this, but it means there.

glennmagusharvey

oops, fixed

I do confuse aquí and ahí sometimes, so thanks for that correction.

glennmagusharvey

TIL: "poner en marcha"

e.g.

https://twitter.com/sanchezcastejon/status/1510904003151945728

glennmagusharvey

Hey Stormtroper, do you happen to know why times of day are pluralized in greetings? e.g. "Buenas noches".

A quick search online suggests three possible reasons:
* It's derived from expressions used to address a group of people, and hence they would each individually have their own "times of day".
* It's derived from "Buenas noches nos dé Dios" (and other similar expressions).
* It's plural in order to intensify the meaning.

Stormtroper

dunno lol
I never wondered about it. The second one is what makes the most sense to me, I know that's the case in Japanese where "konnichi ha" (lit. "a day like this") is a shortening of an old super-long greeting.
mfw I know something about Japanese that I don't know about Spanish.
Also there was something else I was supposed to bring up in this thread that I forgot about, maybe if I post this note I'll remember.

Stormtroper

TIL whether pawns are considered chess pieces or not is language-dependent, with English excluding them (Spanish doesn't). The term that includes them is "man" or "chessman", which I've never heard (although I've heard "material").
Edit: Also, confusingly this is about the game concept itself; when It comes to the physical objects they're all called "pieces".

glennmagusharvey

As far as I know, English does not exclude pawns from the set of all chess pieces:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_piece

A chess piece, or chessman, is a game piece that is placed on a chessboard to play the game of chess. It can be either white or black, and it can be one of six types: king, queen, rook, bishop, knight, or pawn.

Stormtroper

That's what I was referring to with the edit above, but see the Usage of the term piece section below:

In play, the term is usually used to exclude pawns, referring only to a queen, rook, bishop, knight, or king. In this context, the pieces can be broken down into three groups: major pieces (queen and rooks), minor pieces (bishops and knights), and the king.

A few Google searches I did seem to agree with that.

glennmagusharvey

Oh, whoops, I missed it.

Seems like some sort of jargon thing.

glennmagusharvey

TIL: "pero que mier"

fuente: subtítulos en este video

Stormtroper

TIL about the attempts to make Spanish more phonetic.
What could have been.

Stormtroper

Ah, so they finally added captions to this (edit: I meant the not-Latin-America Spanish one, though those who speak that country's language may find the other one useful):

Stormtroper

TIL the fake etymology behind "ingeniería" (i.e. that it comes from "ingenio") is actually true, only that it's more indirect than that; although it comes from the English "engine", that word in turn comes from the Latin ingenium.

glennmagusharvey

I was actually wondering about that for a while myself. I grew up knowing an engineer who worked on aircraft engines, so as a child I thought "engineer" referred to people who worked on engines. But then when I actually studied engineering, I was told that it was actually derived from the same root as "ingenuity", i.e. various Latin words relating to invention and creativity. This seems to actually be the case, for fields of study known as "engineering", because they clearly worked on a lot more than just engines.

But then I thought, what about those people who are called "engineers" on trains? They seem to be more of day-to-day operators than the other kind of "engineers".

I have a feeling that the two etymologies -- which ultimately share the same root anyway, as "engine" is also derived from Latin roots that suggest the creation of machines -- basically were so close together that they essentially crashed back into each other along the way. Both ultimately have to do with working with things created by human ingenuity, anyway.

Here's what Wiktionary has on the etymology of "engineer":

The noun is derived from:[1]
* Middle English enginour (“one who designs, constructs, or operates military works for attack or defence, etc.; machine designer”) [and other forms],[2] from Anglo-Norman enginour, engigneour [and other forms], and Middle French and Old French engigneor, engigneour, engignier (“one who designs, constructs, or operates military works for attack or defence; architect; carpenter; craftsman; designer; planner; one who deceives or schemes”) (modern French ingénieur), from engin (“contraption, device; machine; invention; creativity, ingenuity; intelligence; deception, ruse, trickery”) + -eor, -or (suffix forming agent nouns); engin is derived from Latin ingenium (“innate or natural quality, nature; intelligence, natural capacity; ability, skill, talent; (Medieval Latin) engine; machine”), from in- (prefix meaning ‘in, inside, within’) + gignere (the present active infinitive of gignō (“to bear, beget, give birth to; to cause, produce, yield”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵenh₁- (“to beget, give birth to; to produce”)) + -ium (suffix forming abstract nouns); and
* from engine +‎ -er (suffix forming agent nouns); and
* from engine +‎ -eer (suffix forming agent nouns denoting people associated with, concerned with, or engaged in specified activities), possibly modelled after Middle French ingénieur (a variant of Middle French, Old French engigneour; see above), and Italian ingegniere (“engineer”) (obsolete; modern Italian ingegnere).

The verb is derived from the noun.[3]

And here's Wiktionary's etymology for "engine":

From Middle English engyn, from Anglo-Norman engine, Old French engin (“skill, cleverness, war machine”), from Latin ingenium (“innate or natural quality, nature, genius, a genius, an invention, (in Late Latin) a war-engine, battering-ram”), from ingenitum, past participle of ingignō (“to instil by birth, implant, produce in”). Compare gin, ingenious.

And here's Wiktionary's etymology for "ingeniero":

From French ingénieur, assimilated to the Spanish suffix -ero. Synchronically analyzable asa ingenio (“artifice, ingenuity”) +‎ -ero.

Amusingly, while in English you have the engineers who design things and the engineers who operate things, this etymological convergence seems to not exist for Spanish. I looked up what train engineers were called in Spanish, and it's "maquinista". https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquinista

...which, incidentally, isn't the same thing as a "machinist" in English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinist

Heh.

Stormtroper

I once did an essay on the history of engineering so I feel like I should've known this, but nope. Also it didn't occur to me back then that "engine" was meant as in siege engine.

I actually studied engineering

Sounds like there's a story in here.
On unrelated stuff, I learned that "jaque del pastor" is (probably) called after a cute little story (and that the "pastor" part doesn't refer to a priest):

La combinación recibe el nombre de la leyenda popular de un rey aventurero que salió a cazar una mañana. En la travesía de vuelta, después de haber cazado un jabalí que pretendía asar a la brasa, divisó sentado en una roca al borde del camino real, a un pastor cuidando de tres ovejas. El pastor se entretenía jugando solo al ajedrez, moviendo durante el turno de las blancas y las negras. El rey, confiado, retó al pastor:

— Nadie en la Corte me ha derrotado jamás — dijo el rey.
— Entonces no seré rival para su excelencia — respondió el pastor.

Pero ante la perplejidad de los nobles que acompañaban al rey, el hombre del sombrero de lana derrotó al monarca en cuatro jugadas. A partir de ese momento el rey desterró a los caballeros y cortesanos por dejarle ganar siempre, y nombró Duque del ajedrez al hombrecillo que jugaba solo tutelando a sus ovejas, añadiéndole el título de inventor del jaque pastor.[cita requerida]

glennmagusharvey

Why is "playing chess" "jugar al ajedrez" rather than "jugar ajedrez" or "jugar el ajedrez"?

Also, are the various uses of "a" with derrotar examples of the "personal a"?

also lol "cita requerida"

glennmagusharvey

Elision in Spanish songs completely messes up what meager ability I have to recognize words in their lyrics.

Stormtroper

Why is "playing chess" "jugar al ajedrez" rather than "jugar ajedrez" or "jugar el ajedrez"?

AFAK there's no difference, though I do notice in some places and with some games one is more common than the others.

Also, are the various uses of "a" with derrotar examples of the "personal a"?

*checks what "personal a" is* yeah, I think it is.

glennmagusharvey

¿Cuál es una traducción más preciso en inglés?

"Tierra por conquistar" (en el título aquí)

"Land for (the purpose of) conquering"?
o
"Land (gained) by conquering"?
o otro?

Stormtroper

Land yet to conquer, or perhaps land yet to be conquered, like there's some conquest going on.

glennmagusharvey

Ooh. I was completely off, heh.