A chip off the old block...

One linguistic phenomenon that has always interested me is how different languages have formulated “standard” expressions to communicate the same concept.

For example, in English if you want to express how somebody is acting in a disorganized way, instead of saying just that, you might say that the person is “running around like a chicken with their head cut off.” This communicates your thoughts in a very effective and colorful way, even though neither you nor your audience have probably ever actually seen a decapitated chicken.

In reading Los Informantes, by Juan Gabriel Vásquez (an excellent book by an excellent author: http://www.amazon.com/informantes-Spanish-Juan-Gabriel-Vasquez/dp/9587048687/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262108424&sr=1-1) I was reminded of one way that Spanish speakers express that someone is very much like their parents (something akin to the English phrase “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree): “de tal palo, tal astilla.” Literally, “from such a stick (comes) such a splinter.” Palo means stick, rod, pole, etc, and astilla is the word for splinter. Tal is one of those common but hard to define words that you should definitely work into your vocabulary; here, it means “such.”

Accesible or Asequible?

This morning I was reading an article in a Madrid newspaper about the healthcare reform issue here in the United States. The article began by giving a little background on the current problem of access to healthcare among the uninsured.

The specific phrase that caught my eye was “Para la gran mayoría de personas sin seguro médico, atención médica simplemente no es accesible.” What the author was trying -- but fails -- to say is that healthcare for the great majority of people without insurance is not affordable.

Because she used the word “accesible” -- instead of “asequible” -- what the sentence truly says is that healthcare is not physically available (such as in the geographic sense: no doctors for miles, or something like that…).

“Para la gran mayoría de personas sin seguro medico, atención medica simplemente no es asequible” means that atención medica is not affordable, not within reach economically…

“Para la gran mayoría de personas sin seguro médico, atención médica simplemente no es accesible” translates to “for the majority of people without medical insurance, healthcare is simply not available (because there are no doctors for one hundred miles – which indeed might be the case, but not because they lack insurance)

Asequible = affordable (or also obtainable or available, more in the economic sense)

Accesible = reachable, accessible, “handy”

For example, to play with words and say something like, "Here is a Porsche, within my reach but out of reach", you could say "Aca hay un Porsche, accesible para mi (beacuse I'm standing right beside it), pero no es asequible (because it costs to much).

Un problema grave…

I'm sitting in the restaurant of a hotel close to the Lima, Perú airport, near a glass window separating the non-smoking section from the smoking section. A sign on the wall of the smoking section catches my attention, because it contains one of my grammatical pet peeves. The sign reads: Fumar puede causar severos problemas con la salud…".

Anybody but me bothered by that?

The problem here is that a problem can't be severo – only your mom, your dad, your first grade teacher, a law, or a cop enforcing the law can be severo.

If a problem is bad, or serious, it's grave.

The problem here, in other words, is that the English word severe does not translate to severo, but rather in Spanish is grave. The Spanish word severo means "strict." Grave means "severe," or "serious."

So when you have a bad -- or severe -- disease, you have una enfermedad grave. If you have a serious problem, you have un problema grave.

Another error, probably even more egregious (or grave, if you will), is when someone wants to say "serious problem," so they say "un problema serio." The word serio does indeed mean serious, but in the since of "sober," or "not funny."

Mi amigo Mark es muy serio, porque tiene un problema grave: su esposa es un poco severa con el.

Useful Links….

I frequently use the dictionary of the Real Academia Española: http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/

• If your computer has only an American keyboard (i.e. doesn't have keys for things like ñ or á for example), be sure that you have selected "Búsqueda por aproximación" or "Búsqueda sin signos diacríticos"
  

 

An interesting website, with a variety of articles related to the Spanish language is: http://www.elcastellano.org/

• Be sure to take a look at – and sign up for – the "word of the day feature": http://www.elcastellano.org/palabra.html
  

Ojalá que llueva café en el campo…

I’ll start with a short story to illustrate the great importance of what may seem like a subtle grammatical point. A couple of months ago I was in the emergency department to admit a patient to my service when I heard a commotion – a lot of upset people – in the room adjacent to where I was sitting. There was a Guatemalan family with there daughter, who was the patient. What I got my attention was that the emergency room resident was explaining something to them through an interpreter, and it was obviously pretty bad news, as they were crying and almost screaming, especially the lady who I assumed was the mother. After finishing the explanation, the resident and the medical student with her left the room, and moving closer to where I was, began to discuss the case, specifically that they didn’t understand the reaction of the parents to what the resident had just told them. Curious (and also because I suspected that if the girl was to be admitted to the hospital that it would be me that ended up admitting her) I leaned over and asked what was going on. The resident told me that the girl had been brought to the E.R. by her parents for flu-like symptoms. She suspected that that was exactly what it was, but just in case had drawn blood to do a few tests, including a complete blood count. She said that the blood tests had come back “all screwed up,” that the results looked obviously erroneous, which happens not too infrequently as the result of one error or another. (When that happens, you just draw more blood and repeat the tests, and they usually come back just fine.) In any case, the resident told me that they had just been explaining that to the family, and weren’t quite sure why the family had reacted with such grief and anguish. Nobody likes to get their blood drawn once, much less twice in the same day, but this reaction was over the top. Now I was even more curious, because the mother and the patient were really continuing to become more and more hysterical. In fact, I now began to suspect that because of the language disparity that there might have been some misunderstanding. So, I ask the resident exactly what she had said to the family, and she recounted that she’d simply explained that the blood count had come back with an extremely number of white blood cells, which – where the results to be believed – could indicate something as serious as leukemia. However, she’d told them, it’s likely an error, which would be confirmed be repetition of the tests. I decided to take matters into my own hands now, and went in to talk to the family. My suspicions were confirmed. The interpreter was not a native speaker, nor even what I would consider proficient, and when the doctor had explained that the test results could be suggestive of leukemia, but that she suspected and hoped there’d been an error, the interpreter’s interpretation was “….ojalá que hubiera un error…”

If the reason for the miscommunication (i.e. the difference in what the doctor said and how it was actually interpreted) is obvious to you, then you probably don’t need to read any further. What the doctor had said was “we hope there’s been an error”: implying that the possibility exists. However, what the interpreter said was something like “it’s too bad that there was not an error”. What the interpreter should have said was “Ojalá que haya un error”. The proper use of the subjunctive makes all the difference, so let’s talk about it.

First, remember that the word ojalá is used to express hope or desire for whatever follows it in the sentence. Since it is dealing with things like “hope or desire,” what follows the word ojalá must always be in the subjunctive mood (since by definition if you are hoping, desiring, or wishing, then whatever you are hoping, desiring, or wishing for has not yet happened (and in fact may never happen)). The two most common forms of the subjunctive that you encounter in speech and writing are the present subjunctive and the past imperfect subjunctive. Using the verb venir, the 1^st person plural conjugation in the present subjunctive would be ….que nosotros vengamos, while in the past imperfect subjunctive would be …que nosotros vinieramos, or …que nosotros viniesemos. Usually the choice of which form to use – present or past imperfect – is ridiculously simple. If what you are talking about is in the present time, you use the present tense. I hope I have five dollars = Espero que tenga cinco dólares. If I am talking about how Thursday of last week I was hoping I had five dollars, then I would say, “El jueves de la semana pasada esperaba que tuviera cinco dólares.”

However, that’s not the case when you’re talking about a subjunctive phrase preceded by ojalá. In this case, time -- present or past – has nothing to do with it. Let’s analyze and compare the phrase “Ojalá que tenga cinco dólares” with the similar but very different phrase, “Ojaláque tuviera cinco dólares.” The difference is this: in the first example (Ojalá que tenga cinco dólares), I’ve decided that I need $5 for something, but I haven’t yet opened my wallet to see if I’ve got it. In other words, I hope (but I don’t know…) I have $5. Maybe I have it, maybe I don’t….let me check. Ojalá que tenga cinco dólares. Ojalá que al sacar mi billetera haya $5 adentro. No sé. Voy a ver.

Well, as luck would have it, I open up my wallet…and nothing. No five dollars. Estoy misio. Now, what I want to say is this: I wish I had $5, but I know for a fact I don’t. I say, “Ojalá que tuviera cinco dólares.”

So you see, after Ojalá, whether the verb is in the present or past subjunctive has nothing to do with time. If you you are hoping and there is hope = present subjunctive. If you are wishing, but you know for a fact it ain’t gonna happen = past perfect subjunctive. So going back to my story about the family in the E.R., when the interpreter said “ojalá que hubiera un error”, the family understood that it was a done deal, it was confirmed, there was no error, the results were valid, the child had something bad like leukemia. Had the interpreter said “ojalá que haya un error”, then the family would have understood something completely different: Hopefully there’s an error (we don’t know yet)…”

Let’s look at a few examples.

Remember the Juan Luis Guerra song, “Ojalá que llueva café en el campo…” = Hopefully it’ll rain coffee in the country…

Ojalá que pueda ir a tu fiesta. I hope I can go to your party (I don’t know for sure, but it’s possible).

Ojalá que pudiera ir a tu fiesta. I wish I could go to your party (but I can’t).

Which Dictionary?

One of the most frequent topics of discussion is about what type of dictionary is best. For the beginning learner, the answer is easy and obvious: any Spanish-English bilingual dictionary should suffice. For the more advanced learner, however, the subtle -- and not so subtle -- differences in the many available bilingual dictionaries become more important. More about that in a minute. Another issue I want to address head-on is the very mistaken idea that an advanced learner should not use a bilingual dictionary at all, but rather should use a "regular" Spanish dictionary (i.e. one that is entirely in Spanish). This of course is the type of dictionary that a native speaker would use. But guess what? You're NOT a native speaker. No matter how well you speak Spanish, your brain is "wired" in English. This means that there are certain concepts that you will grasp quicker, easier, and better in your own language. The advanced Spanish learner DOES need a monolingual Spanish dictionary, because certain questions about grammar and usage can only be resolved there, but in general a bilingual dictionary should be kept closer at hand. To illustrate my point, suppose you are reading a passage that includes the word "roble" that you do not recognize. Consulting your monolingual Spanish dictionary (I'm using the one listed below...), you discover that a roble is a " Arbol de la familia de las fagaceas de hojas lobuladas y madera muy dura, cuyo fruta es la bellota, y que puede alcanzar hasta 40m de altura…” Now, I even did the work for you myself by looking the word up in the dictionary for you, but other than learning that a roble must be a species of tree, I bet you still don't really understand what it is. Now look what happens when we consult our trusty BILINGUAL dictionary: we find the single word "oak." And there it is, instant understanding. That's why you need the bilingual dictionary no matter how fluent you are in Spanish. There are some things that are just more easily explained and understood by using your native language.


So here are the two dictionaries that I personally think are best, and that are always with me:

1).The University of Chicago Spanish-English Dictionary, Fifth Edition

2). Larousse Diccionario Básico de la Lengua Española