Spanish language Q&A Forum

John O,
...JO said.......All you have to do is click on the search icon and ask "past participle" or "indirect object....

Thanks for that John.  Then it is not as bas as I thought. I might still ask, but when not explain the definition in the text of the explanation.

The answer to that would be -- it would become very repetitive if we repeated the definition of verb, noun etc every time we mentioned the word.

I didn't know that there was a search / lookup function for definitions - so I accept my criticism might have been a bit harsh.  Not explaining grammar blows my mind and as you said, nobody seems to do it -and when I didn't see it here I was triggered!  I will go and have a look at that search function and maybe other people will now know of it thanks to your response.
RogerH

When there is an indirect pronoun in a sentence we use: me, te, le, nos, os, les. However when the indirect pronouns le and les (meaning to him / to her / to them) are accompanied by the direct pronoun lo, la, los or las (meaning it / them) then le and les become se to avoid a clumsy sounding le lo, le la, les los etc, which is tricky to pronounce. Listen to this example.


I would say that this sort of explanation is probably utterly useless to 80% of people.  I would bet a lot of money that the majority of first language English people reading this for the firs time have no idea what a direct pronoun is nor an indirect pronoun.  It seems that all study guides, and text books assume that people are an expert in the technical language of their own language.  They are not.

If someone ever produced material where they explain the 'technical' term before they try to explain how to use that term it would be so much more useful than throwing the terms around with no explanation.

If you read a mechanics'  manual and it said "'Locate the second differential gear chain"" would that be helpful if it was the first time that you were looking at tractor's engine?


And the very next thing I read was "With an infinitive, imperative or present participle, se and the direct object pronoun can be either at the end of the verbal structure  and attached to the infinitive, imperative or the present participle forming a longer word:

Because for sure, everyone in the world knows what a present participle is.

I have now read the whole thing, and it is clearly written by an expert in the language  of an expert to someone who already understands that expert language.   There is no attempt to actually explain what is going on to a novice.

It is actually terrible teaching. 

Rosalía uses a mix of definite articles and possessive adjectives in "Reliquia". Is this artistic choice? Or a grammar point I'm missing? 

Some of the lyrics: 

"Yo que perdí mis manos en Jerez, y mis ojos en Roma 

... 

los heels en Milán, la sonrisa en U.K"

I understand that dropping the ¨de¨ is something done sometimes in spoken Spanish in Mexico and elsewhere, but it would it be marked incorrect in written Spanish?   It seems like there should be some discussion about how this differs from Castilian rules.   ChatGPT says re Dropping the de

You may hear:

antes que

or

después que

especially in parts of Latin America.

For example:

Antes que llegues...

Después que terminó...

These forms occur in everyday speech in countries such as Mexico, parts of Central America, the Caribbean, Argentina, Uruguay, and elsewhere, though how common they are varies by region and speaker.

However:

They are considered regional rather than the neutral standard.

In formal writing, education, and when speaking to people from across the Spanish-speaking world, antes de que and después de que are the safer, more widely accepted choices.

If your goal is broadly natural, educated Spanish (which I know you've been working toward), I would recommend keeping the de.

Because I kept getting this wrong, I asked Chatgpt: Can one use deber conjugated in El Pretérito Perfecto, followed by an infinitive to express in Spanish that something must have happened, as when making an assumption or wondering what must have happened? The response was: No—not if your goal is to express an assumption ("must have happened").

The pretérito perfecto of deber (ha debido) normally means "has had to" (obligation), not "must have" (probability).