Abrelatas
 

This is a discussion thread for the Daily Spanish Word for March 14, 2009

abrelatas - masculine noun (el) - can opener. Look up abrelatas in the dictionary

Si no tuvieras abrelatas, ¿cómo abrirías una lata?
If you didn't have a can opener, how would you open a can?

Okay - I just had a flashback to my old studying-for-the-SAT's days. LOL!! When I saw the word "abrelatas" in the subject-line of the email this morning, I thought to myself "that must have something to do with opening something". Aha! I was so right. Prefixes, suffixes, word stems, AAAHHHHH!!! All of that stuff is starting (a little bit) to come together for me!!! YAY!!

Anyway - there IS a question that I have. :) Is there a way that the sentence could be written with the impersonal "se"? Something like "Si se no tengas abrelatas, ¿cómo se abre una lata?" - or would that ruin the conditional tense being used?

It could be changed, and still keep the conditional tense, like so:

Si no se tuviera un abrelatas, ¿cómo se abriría una lata?

Oh!!! That's even EASIER than what I did. :) So it's almost like saying "if one didn't have a can opener, how would one open a can?" Right?

Correct!

It aligns somewhat to English. Right? ;)

So how consistent is this way of forming compound spanish words? I know sacapuntas (pencil-sharpener/"makes-points"), parabrisas (windshield[/-screen]/"stops-breezes"), and now this one. How many other '3rd-person singular present indicative + plural noun' compounds like this are there?

Welcome to the forums!!

Compound nouns (sustantivos compuestos) number into the hundreds.

Most are masculine singular nouns, despite the fact that they all end in an 's'. To make the plural form, you just change the article from el to los.
There are occasions when a compound noun refers to a female and it takes a femenine article, like jchen would be una calientalibros (a bookworm).

Look here for a list of about 170 compound nouns. Portaequipajes (trunk) isn't listed. Neither is abrecartas (letter opener) or buscapiés (firecracker), so you'll have to find other lists to get a bigger sampling.

¿comó "trabalenguas"? ¿Significa "locked tongue" literalmente?

There are a lot of meanings for trabar, but I think it's loosely translated as 'something that holds back (impedes the movement of) the tongue'.
Trabarse actually means to get jammed, or stuck. Se me traba la lengua. = I get tongue-tied.

I bid you welcome awizzard.

I recommend you that yourself create your own introduce thread about you.

Sincerely yours.