Wednesday, August 15, 2007

For Blogball

For Spanish-speakers, the word for "touch" (tocar) is the same word as "play" as in "play a song" or "play the guitar".

Also, the word vieja can mean "old" or "old lady" (in both of the senses we use it: older lady, or "my old lady").

So if you tell the mariachi to "Tocame una vieja", you could be saying "Play me an oldie" or you could be saying "Touch an [old lady]" (Snicker, snicker)...

2 Comments:

At Wed Aug 15, 02:52:00 PM PDT, Blogger Blogball said...

Cool Stuff Bryan “Thanks”

How would say: let’s “play” ”touch” Football ?

 
At Thu Aug 16, 12:11:00 AM PDT, Blogger Rob said...

don't really know how to say "touch football", blogball. but happily, the verb for "play" as in "play a sport" is jugar, not tocar, so it's prolly not as confusing as it might be.

however: in one of the past tenses, to go is the same word(s) as to be. Context is sufficient to differentiate, but it's confusing for newbs.

Another (boring) example of confusion:

Te sientas asi =
"You sit that way."

Te sientes asi =
"You feel that way."

Ojala que te sientas asi =
"I hope you feel that way."

Ojala que te sientes asi =
"I hope you sit that way."

Except that not everybody uses perfect grammar, so when someone says Ojala que te sientes asi, you really don't know whether they're talking about your feelings or how you sit. At least, I don't. If any native speakers happen to read this, I'm always open to be educated/corrected...

 

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