Bien Dicho- #2

Lesley D · #1 10-06-2005, 08:21 AM

Another interesting phenomenon is the topic of the day of Bien Dicho in today's el Nuevo Herald and I agree with the point being made.

Here is the article from Trastorno a section of today's el Nuevo Herald:

Comentábamos recientemente que hay expresiones, palabras, dichos que 'se ponen de moda', disminuyendo por regla general su frecuencia de uso con las generaciones sucesivas. Y del mismo modo se ponen de moda los errores, aunque por suerte no suelen durar toda una generación.
Uno que notamos está en su apogeo es el uso de la expresión de acuerdo a en lugar de la locución de acuerdo con.

Debemos recordar que estas construcciones son expresiones compuestas por dos o más vocablos que forman un conjunto fijo e indivisible que tiene el valor de una clase determinada de palabras.

De acuerdo con funciona como una preposición (según).

No debemos decir:

Ocurrió de esa forma de acuerdo a fuentes fidedignas.

Sino:

Ocurrió de esa forma de acuerdo con fuentes fidedignas.
-------------------

In summary the article is discussing the incorrect usage of the expression de acuerdo con (according to) which is a synonym of según and the meaning is equivalent. What is often said and I can attest to this as well is de acuerdo a which is incorrect.

Although the article does not mention this I suspect the change of preposition from 'con' to 'a' could be because of the English preposition 'to'. Again the possible influence of English in Spanish.

Another example that immediately comes to mind is the expression estar de vacaciones (to be on vacation). I commonly hear estar en vacaciones.The expression 'to be on vacation' is estar de vacaciones but 'en' instead of 'de' is used in colloquial speech. This is an incorrect colloquial form that may be attributed to the influence of English but I am not totally convinced as yet although I have given it much thought and analysis. There are many more examples of incorrect phrasal forms such as these in everyday spoken Spanish.

LDG.

***my 1,000th post***

deelt · #2 10-06-2005, 12:26 PM

Now you are officially an old timer on DR1. congrats on your 1000th post.

Lesley D · #3 10-06-2005, 06:27 PM

Hi Deelt,

Very nice of you to acknowledge this landmark and also it tells me you read my post. Muy bien.

Talk to you later,

LDG.

Quote:

Originally Posted by deelt

Now you are officially an old timer on DR1. congrats on your 1000th post.

deelt · #4 10-06-2005, 06:37 PM

Of course I read your posts! But they are perfect. So why should I ruin perfection?

D

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lesley D

Hi Deelt,

Very nice of you to acknowledge this landmark and also it tells me you read my post. Muy bien.

Talk to you later,

LDG.

Lesley D · #5 10-07-2005, 07:17 AM

Here is what the dictionary says with regards to expressions with 'estar de ....' as per my first post. As I mentioned I have analyzed mentally why speakers err but was not convinced that English was to blame and here is the explanation:

Realizar una actividad o hallarse en disposición de ejecutarla. Se construye con las preps. de y en seguidas de un nombre de acción: está en un proyecto secreto; está de parto, de viaje, de merienda.

As per the definition and explanation in the dictionary it states that expressions with 'estar de ' or 'estar en' are used to express an action or being in a position to carry out an action but one has to know when to use one over the other. As mentioned above estar de vacaciones is correct and not estar en vacaciones.

-estar de viaje, de vacaciones etc.

LDG.

samanasuenos · #6 10-11-2005, 12:54 PM

Funny thing to read your post toady. I have more than once found myself in teh midst of being corrected by a NATIVE spanish speaker - telling me ot say EN vacaciones, instead of "DE" which is what I was taught.

I am guessing that EN prevails in some regions of the world, despite what book learnin" would have us use.

Hmn, interesting.

It does kind of make me a bit sad to see American English/English infiltrating the Spanish language.

I wonder if it always works that way, if the wealthier force's language comes to dominate the struggling one.Sorry - this would be a tangent for another thread. Pardon ma musin's.

Thank you, please continue. I am leaning towards a Miami Herald sunscription now myself.

Lesley D · #7 10-11-2005, 01:09 PM

Thank you for your feedback and your post has so much truth to it. Grammar rules exists in every language but the way people speak is influenced by many others factors as you know.

It's interesting that you mentioned the wealthier forces because I have a resource that you may be interested in purchasing that deals exclusively with this concept of English dominance in Spanish today that was released a few years ago and it goes into depth about the antagonism that exists between English and Spanish and how the RAE is approaching the issue in terms of keeping Spanish as unchanged as possible. There is also a chapter dedicated to Spanish and the internet.

I don't have the details with me now but if you are interested I will send you a private message with the details of the book.

LDG.

Tordok · #8 10-11-2005, 05:51 PM

Funny, it is not uncommon for Dominicans to say "Ramón hoy está en tragos".
You also could hear "Ramón hoy está de tragos". "Tragos", BTW is often substituted by "bebedera" with the same basic construction and both phrases mean the same thing: "Ramón is into drinking today". I suspect both are grammatically incorrect. Any feedback, Lesley? (not about Ramon's drinking, but about the way we construct these phrases.
thank,
- Tordok

Lesley D · #9 10-12-2005, 07:08 AM

If those two phrases appeared on a multiple choice grammar exam I would choose the second one simply because it complies with the rules of grammar for that type of phrasal construction.

The usage of 'en' and 'de' in your first example is comparable to my original example 'de vacaciones' vs. 'en vacaciones'. Regarding an explanation as to why it grammatically can't be 'en tragos' I sent you a PM but remember colloquially it is possible that you will hear anything imo.

LDG.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tordok

1) "Ramón hoy está en tragos".
You also could hear 2) "Ramón hoy está de tragos". "Tragos", BTW is often substituted by "bebedera" with the same basic construction and both phrases mean the same thing: "Ramón is into drinking today". I suspect both are grammatically incorrect. - Tordok

Lesley D · #10 09-05-2008, 02:25 PM

I did not want to start a new thread for this grammar point however, I wanted to post it somewhere to reiterate what I have said many times and a few other posters as well regarding the 's' in certain verb forms and tenses.

In general, many Spanish speakers have complete verb control and there are many speakers who struggle with correct verb conjugation due to many factors. Some may find it strange that one can't conjugate verbs in his/ her own language but this happens in English too. Many speakers err and conjugate verbs incorrectly.

In Spanish, one of the common incorrect verb conjugations is adding 's' to the tú form of the preterit tense. It is believed in sociolinguistic studies that the reason for this that all other 'tú' form conjugations in other tenses have 's'. The preterit tense is the only one that does not. Therefore, by force of habit speakers tend to add 's' and in fact it's incorrect.

This is a phenomenon I have observed for many years and in my esteem the percentage of speakers who make this error is quite high and it ranges from the well-educated speaker to the campesino from any Spanish-speaking country. Another error I observed just last week which I had not heard before was adding 's' to the present tense of the third person singular. I was visiting a friend of a friend who is Dominican from San Pedro and in general her Spanish was quite good, not very regional but as we got deeper into conversation a few icons of sociolinguistic flaws surfaced. As we were conversing the woman said to me:

'si él se vas, es bueno, es muy bueno'.

That was the first time I heard 'se vas' and the woman repeated it many times so it wasn't just a one time error in her speech.

In general, IMO the 's' is a problem in the Dominican vernacular both dropping it excessively and adding it where it does not belong. These speech patterns are not recommended to foreigners in terms of imitating. In the Spanish-speaking world proper and correct speech is admired and recognized.

-LDG.

Quote:

Publicado el lunes 01 de septiembre del 2008

BIEN DICHO
Nos comenta nuestra lectora Graciela Temes la necesidad de recordar a los hispanohablantes las reglas de conjugación para la segunda persona del singular, especialmente la correspondiente al llamado pretérito perfecto simple (pretérito o indefinido) del modo indicativo.
Mucha razón lleva la Sra. Temes, pues es tema recurrente el error que cometen muchos hablantes al adjudicar a este tiempo una terminación común no pertinente. La terminación de la conjugación correspondiente a la 2da. persona del singular del pretérito (indefinido) del modo Indicativo NO es s, sino e, más exactamente - ste:

tú viniste, hiciste, comiste, dijiste, escribiste, jugaste, bailaste, etc.

Creemos que el error se debe a que en todos los otros tiempos sí es pertinente la terminación s: vienes/venías/vinieras/vendrías/vendrás/vengas; haces/hacías/hicieras/harías/harás/hagas, etc.

Consideremos que este tiempo pasado es la excepción y su conjugación correspondiente NO termina en s, sino en e. Es pues INCORRECTO decir: vinistes, hicistes comiste, jugastes. Digamos:

Viniste, hiciste, comiste, jugaste.