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Hey there! How do you say “is it me or does (blah blah blah)” in Spanish? Is there a way to construct that phrase? I pick up what I can of colloquial Spanish (these days mostly Latin American) from talking to people on here, but things like this idk if they’d use the English grammar or what. Ty

The general way that you say "is it me" or "is it just me" is:

¿Soy yo o...? = Is it me or...? ¿Es cosa mía o...? = Is it (only happening to) me or...?

es cosa mía is literally "is it my thing" but it's asking like "hey does anyone else notice that?"

Another way you can say it is the use of imaginarse

It's going to depend on how comfortable you feel using a reflexive verb; imaginarse is "to imagine"

[side note: imaginar is "to imagine" usually in the literal sense of to imagine something or to picture something in your mind; imaginarse is "to imagine" with a bit more of an emotional oomph it's also "to imagine" but can be used as "to figure" or "to suspect" or "to be of the opinion" - as a command imagínate when used with informal situations is acting someone to "picture something" like "put yourself in this position"........... essentially imaginarse comes out more often when you're putting yourself in the position of hypothetical situations and imagining scenarios and feelings; while imaginar is a less involved version of playing pretend]

You would be saying - ¿me lo estoy imaginando o...? or ¿me lo imagino o...? which both mean "is it just me?" or "am I imagining it or...?"

This can also be said sarcastically like "am I hallucinating or...?"

#asks #language #langblr #learning spanish #la gramatica #idiomatic expressions #spanish #long post

How would you express “fuck around and find out (FAFO)” in Spanish?

Okay, so there are a handful of ways to say it, most don't have the same vulgarity to it

There isn't much that has the same standardization or vulgarity but:

Sigue así, y verás qué pasa. = Keep it up and you'll see what happens.

El que busca encuentra. = "The one who looks will find."

And two others that are idiomatic expressions that can be sort of conjugated at will:

jugar con fuego = to play with fire. Often it's like si juegas con fuego, te quemas "if you play with fire you get burned"

sembrar vientos y recoger tempestades = "to sow wind and reap the whirlwind". Biblical, but it's "you reap what you sow" basically. Sometimes it's remolinos "whirlwinds" instead of tempestades "storms"

There are also some that you can just kind of put together. They're not idiomatic but they make sense. Like no jueges o te va a pesar which is "don't play or you'll regret it" as a command of jugar

I also do want to point out the use of buscar here - while it isn't just "to look for", there are some places and contexts where it can be a little bit more.

I don't know if it's anywhere else but I've seen te lo buscaste for Spain. That is literally "you sought it out for yourself", so it comes off as "you got what you deserved" or simply "you deserved it"

You can often see buscar used that way

The basic buscar peligro "to look for danger" or buscar problemas "to look for trouble". I've also seen estás buscando una paliza "you're looking for a beating"

I have also heard an expression that I think it's regional but it was like rifar una hostia which is "to raffle off a beatdown" in Spain. The full expression is something like se está rifando una hostia y tienes todas las papeletas

That literally means "they're raffling off a smackdown and you've got all the tickets"

#asks #language #langblr #la gramatica #learning spanish #spanish #idiomatic expressions

ok so. i'm learning spanish using a textbook (the mcgraw-hill easy spanish step by step) and i'm confused about ser vs estar and what is considered personal opinion vs description

it says you should use estar for matters of personal opinion (e.g. la comida está deliciosa) but on a quiz in that same chapter, the answer key says that same sentiment should use ser (la comida es deliciosa) because its a description.

is this a flaw in the textbook, or is there nuance i'm not grasping?

Okay, so this is a very specific instance.

Both are actually correct, but you're saying different things:

La comida es deliciosa. = The food is delicious. [fact] La comida está deliciosa. = The food looks delicious. / The food is delicious [this particular food].

When it comes to food, estar tends to be that "the food right now" or "this particular dish"

It kind of reads like "the food came out good" if that makes sense - like there was a chance it might not have been, but this particular dish is good. Rather than a clear statement of fact using ser

You don't have to worry about this too much because both make sense; ser delicioso/a often defines your personal taste like la pizza es deliciosa or la cocina japonesa es deliciosa to say "pizza is delicious" or "Japanese food/cuisine is delicious" to make it seem like those are your preferences

If you get a specific plate of food in front of you and you're complimenting it, estar might be more common

[also note instead of delicioso/a you can use rico/a instead - you can and will see this; so instead of está delicioso/a you could say está rico/a; and if you wanted to boost the compliment even more you can put it in the superlative - está riquísimo/a to mean "it is extremely delicious" or "it is very tasty"........... also note sometimes people use sabroso/a for "delicious" too; it means "flavorful" but it's like "tasty" since sabroso/a is related to sabor "flavor"]

For food, the meaning isn't so different, it's just a slight nuance. Some of the differences with ser/estar can be major, this one is relatively minor

There are a handful of times when estar will attach a very subtle meaning to it, and sometimes it changes how it comes out

With other things it can often come across as "to look (a certain way)" and it sometimes changes the meaning that's intended:

Eres genial. = You are amazing. / You are great. Estás genial. = You look amazing.

Using ser for that is a definition of them as a person; estar is an evaluation of their appearance/outfit

In its exact opposite you can see - es horrible "it is horrible" or es espantoso "it is awful/horrifying", but then está horrible or está espantoso to mean "it looks awful" or "it looks hideous"

...

This is a little similar to how it works with emotions too; ser feliz can be "to be a happy person" while estar feliz means "to be happy / to look happy" as if something specific had changed or that someone is happier than usual as if you can tell something good happened

And in its opposite ser triste can be "to be a sad person" [or to describe a situation as "awful" or "unfortunate"], while estar triste makes more sense in general as "to look sad" or "to be sad" as if there was a particular event or cause rather than just their personality

#asks #learning spanish #langblr #la gramatica #spanish language #language #long post

I'm not sure how common this word is, but there's this word bisoño/a is another word for "newbie" or "rookie"

The most general word for this in Spanish is el novato or la novata [meaning "newbie", while there's also principiante meaning "beginner"]

But bisoño/a carries the meaning of "inexperienced"

If anyone knows Italian you probably caught that this word comes from bisogno in Italian meaning "necessity", and it's part of the expression in Italian for "I need"

[similar to Spanish, Italian has multiple expressions with their verb for "to have" that can be used with other words for certain expressions - like in Spanish, tengo hambre is "I am hungry" but literally "I have hunger"... in Italian one of the ways to say "I need" is literally "I have need of"]

Supposedly the story behind this is that during 1490s/1500s, Spain - specifically Castille and Aragon - also had control of parts of Italy, being the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily

At the time, the French were also trying to gain control of large parts of Italy, so there were wars in Italy over this

And when the new or inexperienced troops from the Spanish Crown went over to Italy, they didn't always know how to take care of themselves or figure things out so they were always trying to say ho bisogno di meaning "I need (something)"...

so it became this running joke of "here come these newbies, they're so needy" and that's why it's bisoño/a

#spanish #learning spanish #langblr #la gramatica #idiomatic expressions #spanish language #vocabulario

Unrelated to everything, I keep forgetting the difference between tenaz and tenaza

tenaz is an adjective meaning "tenacious" or "determined".... aka "stubborn" but in a nice way

And then la tenaza or las tenazas refer mainly to "a pair of pliers", or for some animals like crabs etc it could also be a synonym for la pinza meaning "pincer" or "claw" of a crab/lobster or ants etc

...

Which does make sense it's like something with grip or "something that won't let go of things", so it is very much where you get "tenacious"

I just have to remind myself constantly that the adjective ends in just the Z like veloz, atroz, feliz etc.

#spanish #learning spanish #langblr #la gramatica #vocabulario

I think the one expression in Spanish that caught me off guard the most as someone who learned formal grammar was learning yo que tú

In regular formal Spanish - which is still standard and I want to preface that this is totally normal - you usually say si yo fuera tú (or the more Spain version si yo fuese tú) for "if I were you"

And in general that's how you do that whole thing "if you were me", "if I were you", etc etc it's all the imperfect subjunctive [a contrary to fact statement], and then you usually follow it up with conditional ["then I would..."]

So like, si yo fuera tú, no lo haría "if I were you, I wouldn't do it"; imperfect subjunctive + conditional

...

But colloquially if you didn't want to deal with the imperfect subjunctive, you will often see yo que tú which is literally "I that you"; but it's like "if I were in your place" or "if it were me"

Just colloquial

The conditional is still the same - yo que tú, no lo haría "if I were you, I wouldn't do it"

I've also seen people use yo de ti instead of yo que tú; that's really informal though and not always approved of for standard Spanish - yo de ti literally is "I of you", but it sort of comes out like "I, about you, + conditional"

...

In other words, very standard use all your verbs is si yo fuera tú

Colloquial yo que tú... then a little more informal than that, yo de ti

#spanish #langblr #learning spanish #la gramatica

Idiomatic Expression - la cuesta de enero

Literally this is "the January slope/hill"

But what this usually means is an economic thing - after the Christmas holiday in December, January is usually the month when the costs of things go up again, when taxes increase, or when some services raise their prices

In addition to people having spent more money on the holidays, people started calling this phenomenon the "January slope" in Spanish

This is normally Latin America more than Spain, but especially around this time of year you'll see economic think pieces about spending trends or how to tighten your budget etc and usually you see la cuesta de enero come up

[note: la cuesta is also a geographic term for "slope" or "the side of a mountain"; it's not related to costar "to cost" here exactly, although costar is an O->UE verb]

#spanish #languages #language #langblr #la gramatica #learning spanish #vocabulario

Is there a Spanish equivalent of "hang in there!" and like "hanging in there" ?

There are a few options.

First there's saying ánimo - now to be clear el ánimo as a basic noun is generally like "spirit" or "cheer" in the sense of like a mood or "in good cheer" if that makes sense? It can also refer to just your own spirit or mood

But, you can say ¡Ánimo! as a way to encourage someone kind of like "keep your chin up!" or sometimes it gets translated as "Good luck!", so you can say that or mucho ánimo and encourage someone

...

The other three options are technically verbs, so you phrase them as commands:

aguantar = to put up with, to bear, "to hold on"

resistir = to resist

rendir(se) = to give up

You're more likely to see people say ¡Aguanta! or ¡Resiste! as "Hang in there!" or "Hold on!" or even "Tough it out!"

aguantar is extremely common especially in South America as "to put up with something"

There's even an idiomatic expression that's ajo y agua which you'd see it and think "garlic and water?" but it's a bit of a vulgar expression - ajoderse y aguantar which gets shortened to ajo y agua. It literally means "(get) all fucked up and bear it", so it's a vulgar form of "grin and bear it"...

But ajo y agua is like "put up with it because there's no choice" and it's really awful

resistir is very basic, but just know that la resistencia can be "resistance" but it's also "resilience" so it carries that particular last meaning of "hold on"

There is also the option of mantener(se) firme which is "to hold firm/fast" or "to stay strong", so as a tú command in particular someone might say mantente firme as in "keep holding on"

...

The last option is with rendirse which is "to give up/surrender", so you're going to see this as a negative command

Primarily it'll be no te rindas "don't give up" as a tú command - but otherwise no se rinda for usted, and no se rindan for plural

rendir can be a really useful verb to know - it can mean "to yield" as in another word for dar; as a reflexive, rendirse is "to give up"

It's like "render" to "surrender", literally "give" vs "give up"... just different kind of "yield" I guess

If you were doing a positive command it's ríndete "give up", or ríndase or ríndanse - absolutely something you'll see if you read or watch anything with battles in it

#asks #spanish #langblr #learning spanish #la gramatica #idiomatic expressions #vocabulario #long post