rosetta stone

[efrntzl]

hello, i am learning spanish with rosetta stone. while learning, in order to sort of speed things up, if a new word comes up, i will look it up here to find its meaning. i am finding that there have been a few words that rosetta stone uses that are not listed in this site. is rosetta stone using antiquated vocabulary, or does this site not have all words? or maybe it has something to do with the special characters?

for example, the words 'sosteniendo' (holding?) and 'saludando' (waving?) are used by rosetta stone, but are not listed here.

thanks for any help, eric

[Tomisimo]

Hi efrntzl, Good question and welcome to the site.

I'll be the first to say there are still words missing from the dictionary, but I work almost every day to keep adding them. The problem with the words you mention 'sosteniendo' and 'saludando' is that they are conjugated, just as 'holding' and 'waving' are conjugated. If you look in an English dictionary, you won't find the word 'holding', but you will find the base word 'hold' (in this case, it's a verb so the base word is called the infinitive). It works the same way in Spanish. When you have the word 'sosteniendo', and you want to look it up in the dictionary, you'll have to try to find the "base word" for that word, in this case sostener and saludar.

I know you're new to Spanish, so it probably seem wild and crazy to you, but 'sostener' is the infinitive meaning 'to hold/to support', which is then conjugated to form what grammarians call the present progressive= 'sosteniendo'.

I hope that helps you

That being said, it would be really cool if the dictionary could recognize the conjugated forms and point you toward the correct base word. I've thought about that in the past and I'll have to examine that possibility again.

[celador]

Excellent point being made here. I was going to ask a question similar to this thread.

There are lots of conjugation sites, (and books) but none of them that I have seen list the infinitive in English, which I wish they would do, or show the ing / ando suffix, They don't seem to always follow the general rule format.

Like this word that sosia used for instance: desvanezca / vanishes
I'm going to be real suprised if I can just say desvanezcando / vanishing (melting) Probably it will be desvanacerando, No?

Next question:

The prefix for un or in in English. What is the Spanish rule for that? How would you go from recognized to unrecognized .
"des" usually de reconocido a desconocido

What is the Spanish rule for that? or do I have to learn the words?

[Tomisimo]

Good questions celador. desvanezca is the subjunctive of desvanecer. The ing form would be desvaneciendo. About the prefix for in/un in Spanish, "des-" is common, but Spanish also uses "in-", and probably more.

[celador]

I couldn't find any "ciendo" in the dictionary (Tomisimo) In fact there were no words that end in "endo" or "ando" , or "ing" either.

So maybe if you get bored or something you can add a bunch of ando, endo, and ciendo and "ing" words to the database.

that indcludes haceciendo, another word that Sosia used. I assume, although I couldn't find it, that it is a correctly used and spelled word, meaning "making" ? or causing in this context, taken from derivation of hacer.

haceciendo que la noche; / causing that the night.
I am wondering also if using "que" is necessary. Could that be dropped.
or is this what makes it say causing vs. making, or doing?

[Tomisimo]

haceciendo is actually a typo, it should be "haciendo".

The "que" is necessary in Spanish, although in English it isn't.

The que is necessary because the following verb is in the subjunctive.

[celador]

hmm.. ok. That was my first thought too. I thought I tried that, but I guess i didn't get it right. Now it works fine. lol

Gracias

[celador]

My bad, David. Lo Siento.

I just noticed that the conjugation page that links from Tomisimo dictionary verbs does have
Gerundio: haciendo Participio Pasado: hecho up at the top of the page.

Muy bueno.

[efrntzl]

thanks for your replies. i guess this is also true for the tienen / tiene / tenia combo - have / has / had. although tenia comes up as tapeworm, like many english words, it has two meanings... thanks again.

[celador]

yes, and go figure? Why babelfish would use the tapeworm meaning ... I mean, how often does that come up in conversation compared to tenia ?
However, tenía (with the tildi on the í )does work.

another one that drives me nuts, is peso o pesos always used as weight vz. the monetary unit. pesa works fine for the weight.
Maybe it's like learning three languages. English, Spanish and BabelFish. lol