Looseness of Spanish Grammar?

[satchrocks]

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to use this thread as justification to learn Spanish poorly or incompletely!

After having spoken with a few native Spanish Speakers (Latin American), I am getting the impression that in Spanish (much like in English or other languages), grammatical rules can sometimes be relaxed; there are countless examples of this in English ("good" is oftentimes used where the adverb "well" should be, people sometimes say "of" instead of "have," etc.)

My question is: How often are grammatical rules relaxed in most colloquial Spanish? For example, one individual with whom I spoke didn't really seem to differentiate between the indicative and subjunctive tenses - "comemos" and "comamos" would both work to get one's point across and the individual would not be greatly faulted for using such (i.e. it would not be considered juvenile/"infant" grammar).

Muchas gracias!

[sosia]

You can relax the language as much as your partner does.
If the other person agree, you an relax it as much as you want.
I must say latin American usually have another usages, wich are not worse or better, but simply more used.
Saludos

[María José]

When it comes to verb tenses you have to follow the rules, I'm afraid.
Something that is more relaxed in Spanish than in English is word order,almost anything is possible.

[ROBINDESBOIS]

Well, to some extent.
A coleague of mine is an American, living in Madrid for 20 years and she doesn´t get a single subjunctive tense right, and I think it doesn´t matter, we understand her anyway. On the other hand, some Spanish people use some verbs incorrectly but that sounds bad to us, if you are a foreigner, everything is OK, but if you are Spanish things change, you sound low-class.

[irmamar]

I'd like to add that in some places in Spain, they don't use the correct tense of the verbs perhaps because there is another language spoken.

For instance, in Galicia, they say "viniera" instead of "vino" (Juan viniera el lunes, for Juan vino el lunes), or "estuve" for "he estado" (estuve ahora en tu casa, instead of he estado ahora en tu casa), I guess it's because they don't use compound verbs in Galician (I'm not really sure). And in Euskadi, for example, I've found people who don't say the articles (voy a garaje a buscar coche, for voy al garaje a buscar el coche)

[poli]

In Latin America (the Carribbean in particular) people use articles less than they do in Spain--not officially as in written documents, but in every-day speech.

[CrOtALiTo]

In Spanish there're verbs more relaxed rules than English.

For instance.

Jugamos, jugaremos, jugar.

There're more choices in Spanish as often as you use them.

Now in other languages only there're a littles choices.

Play, To will play, To won't play relatively theses choices are the same only with the different between them are the future.

I hope this can help you.

[Tomisimo]

Originally Posted by satchrocks

My question is: How often are grammatical rules relaxed in most colloquial Spanish? For example, one individual with whom I spoke didn't really seem to differentiate between the indicative and subjunctive tenses - "comemos" and "comamos" would both work to get one's point across and the individual would not be greatly faulted for using such

Some things can be relaxed, for example:

Sometimes you can omit the "de" in "de que":
Estoy seguro que vas a ganar.
Estoy seguro de que vas a ganar.

Sometimes you can omit the "que" that introduces a dependent clause:
Espero te haya gustado lo que hice.
Espero que te haya gustado lo que hice.

You specifically mention not differentiating between the indicative and subjunctive in some cases. In Spanish, this is never going to happen with a native Spanish speaker since it is such an integral part of the language and meaning depends on it.

[CrOtALiTo]

Originally Posted by Tomisimo

Some things can be relaxed, for example:

Sometimes you can omit the "de" in "de que":
Estoy seguro que vas a ganar.
Estoy seguro de que vas a ganar.

Sometimes you can omit the "que" that introduces a dependent clause:
Espero te haya gustado lo que hice.
Espero que te haya gustado lo que hice.

You specifically mention not differentiating between the indicative and subjunctive in some cases. In Spanish, this is never going to happen with a native Spanish speaker since it is such an integral part of the language and meaning depends on it.

David. You're right, but anyhow that rule in Spanish is indifferent, I mean, in fact the sentence has the same meaning but they never missing the sense, the two phrases means the same, but the second one is the more correct.

[ookami]

For me it isn't more correct...
I prefer "Estoy seguro que vas a ganar" than ""Estoy seguro de que vas a ganar" .. "de" is not neccesary at all and, for me, it sounds bad. (there was a good article about that.. i will search for it)

Personally i almost never "relax" too much the language and my friends and family either (you can say quick and informal things whitout needing to make a language fault). It depends a lot of the education and the tradition of the zone.

As the other ones said, spanish has a lot of optiones..
-¿comemos?
in context, same as:
-¡comamos!

[CrOtALiTo]

Originally Posted by ookami

For me it isn't more correct...
I prefer "Estoy seguro que vas a ganar" than ""Estoy seguro de que vas a ganar" .. "de" is not neccesary at all and, for me, it sounds bad. (there was a good article about that.. i will search for it)

Personally i almost never "relax" too much the language and my friends and family either (you can say quick and informal things whitout needing to make a language fault). It depends a lot of the education and the tradition of the zone.

As the other ones said, spanish has a lot of optiones..
-¿comemos?
in context, same as:
-¡comamos!

Hello.

In part of the you have said is right, but it doesn't means that the last phrase is incorrect, because Estoy seguro de que vas a ganar basically is a correct conjugation in Spanish, and well, also I'm agree with you that the Spanish has much camp where you can take the words are says exactly the same or at least makes sense the phrase, this with the English is something hard to does, but refer to the first one, I believe that exist divers opinions about the that you have said before.


Sincerely yours.

[ookami]

Hello, thanks for the reply. I didn't said it was incorrect, i said "it isn't more correct" -than the other one.

Goodbye

[CrOtALiTo]

Originally Posted by ookami

Hello, thanks for the reply. I didn't said it was incorrect, i said "it isn't more correct" -than the other one.

Goodbye

Whatever, you're welcome.

[irmamar]

Well, the correct way is "estoy seguro de que vas a ganar". Why? It's very easy, just ask to the verb: ¿De qué estoy seguro? (¿Qué estoy seguro? makes no sense)

Estoy convencido de que vendrán este fin de semana. ¿De qué estoy convencido?
Dijeron que vendrían. ¿Qué dijeron?

http://buscon.rae.es/dpdI/SrvltConsu...a=que%C3%ADsmo

[Rusty]

It's interesting that in English we sometimes use the preposition.

Are you sure he's coming?
I'm sure of it. = I'm sure.

Are you sure of that? = Are you sure?
Yes, I'm sure he's coming.

In English, we don't have to use the conjunction 'that':
I'm sure he's coming. = I'm sure that he's coming.

Either way, we never use the preposition 'of' after 'sure'.
We only seem to throw it in when the subjunctive complement 'sure' would otherwise stand alone, as demonstrated above, but we want to embellish it with the prepositional phrase.


I wonder some days if the conquistadores forgot to bring that page from the RAE with them to the New World. I'm pretty certain I've heard many people 'forget' to say the preposition de after the subjective complement segur@.

[CrOtALiTo]

Originally Posted by Rusty

It's interesting that in English we sometimes use the preposition.

Are you sure he's coming?
I'm sure of it. = I'm sure.

Are you sure of that? = Are you sure?
Yes, I'm sure he's coming.

In English, we don't have to use the conjunction 'that':
I'm sure he's coming. = I'm sure that he's coming.

Either way, we never use the preposition 'of' after 'sure'.
We only seem to throw it in when the subjunctive complement 'sure' would otherwise stand alone, as demonstrated above, but we want to embellish it with the prepositional phrase.


I wonder some days if the conquistadores forgot to bring that page from the RAE with them to the New World. I'm pretty certain I've heard many people 'forget' to say the preposition de after the subjective complement segur@.

I agree with you often the either way in English is used alots prepositions when are needed.

I'm interesting in your comments, you've chance to write more instances here, please!.

I'll be grateful with your help thanks.

[jannr]

Hi Satch,

(As a non-native speaker) my impression is that native monolingual speakers of Spanish don't make mistakes in indicative vs. subjunctive usage, although there are a FEW instances in which either can be used in certain dialects For example: Si llueva/llueve, no iremos al parque. For these speakers, the in first case, the rain is more iffy, I believe. Sort of like "Just in case it rains, we won't go to the park" vws. "If it rains, we won't go to the park."

Differences in "correctness" are often due to vocabulary ("Callate el hocico" vs. "Callate" (standard); asina instead of asi), minor differences in things like que/de que that were mentioned in an earlier post, and especially, difference in local vocabulary. It's important to remember that there is no one universal Spanish.

On the other hand,when you notice words and grammatical constructions that don't seem right, it IS important to remember who said what and in what context. That way you can learn the social perameters for their usage.