Re: Thank you Jinhyun

athel...@yahoo wrote:
On Mar 30, 4:42 pm, R H Draney <dadoc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
athel...@yahoo filted:


[ ... ]
Do have any examples of the inverse case -- i.e. distinctions
that we don't bother to make in English but which speakers of
other languages regard as essential?

[ ... ]

One case familiar to those who have compared English with other
languages is that we use the same forms of the verb "to be" where
the other language distinguishes "to be at a certain time" from
"to be as a permanent characteristic"...in Spanish it's "ser" vs
"estar";

Yes, but on the whole English speakers have very little difficulty
in understanding the difference between "ser" and "estar", and even
if we have only one verb "to be" we can (and do) still make most of
the distinctions that Spanish speakers make with "ser" and "estar":

Escribo --> I write
Estoy escribiendo --> I am writing

It seems to me that it's French and German speakers who have
difficulty with these. My first wife spent some years teaching in a
language school where most of the clients were German or Spanish
businessmen. She said that the former had endless difficulties with
understanding the difference between different verb forms, but that
the latter had none at all.

The difference between the simple present and the present progressive
may not be exactly the same in English and Spanish, though. Recently
someone posted that the telephone greeting in Argentina was once
"oigo"; but the English equivalent would be "I'm listening" (Yes, I
know, different verb.). It seemed to me that the simple present there
must convey the same kind of aspect that you get from the use of the
preterite instead of the imperfect. Consider the Yucateca song "La
Llorona": "Hermoso huípil llevabas, Llorona, que la Virgén te *creí*."
I "took you for" the Virgin, not I "believed you were" the Virgin.

Similarly, "Oigo" seems to me to convey the same immediate sense of
brief time as in the song above (Speak up, already) which would be
given in English in that context by the present progressive. It was a
new idea for me and I didn't comment on it in that thread, except to
ask my question and add an eye-dialect porteño spelling of "Estoy
oyendo", which the poster didn't specifically reply to.

Sorry about busting in with "ser y estar" before reading r's posting.


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