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Old March 24, 2008, 12:54 AM
canyonff canyonff is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2008
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me ayuda por favor

i had a situation the other day where I needed to talk to the spanish crews boss. So basically, i asked them where he was, and they'd say "i don't know". or "over there," basically some indescript location. When i was about to say "well what's his name?" my brother ended up finding the site supervisor, so we didn't need to find their boss anymore. which to me was a relief because i was unsure of the most correct way to ask.

obviously;

what's your bosses name?
?que es el nombre de tu jefe? [informal]
?que es el nombre de su jefe? [formal]


is the most literal of translations [read: dumb] , so I didn't want to say it like that. I know that spanish speakers generally use llamar when speaking about names. So the wheels started turning in my head and I locked up. I couldn't for the life of me recall how to say "what do you call him."

so basically i sat down and thought about it.

[en la cabeza]

i know i want to use llamas [you call], but hmmmm. Which pronoun to use?

?como se llamas? - [could work, but too ambiguous]
?como se llamas tu? - [still ambiguous]
?como se llamas a/de él? - [don't even think that's right]

that just sounds too reflexive, then i thought maybe

?como te lo llamas? - [nope still not right, but hey!]
?como lo llamas? - [hmmm, let's see]

como - what >
llamas - you call [s/v] >
lo - 3rd(s) d.o. pronoun [d.o]

hey that's it! I think...

[/en la cabeza]


So basically, what i'm asking is, is "?como lo llamas?" correct in the following situation?

me - ?dónde está tu jefe?
p1 - no sé.
me - ?como lo llamas? or ?como se llamas? [since i believe it's obvious I don't want the listeners name, or would it still be too ambiguous]


Just wondering, but it got me thinking of all the different ways you could say "What's your bosses name?" So I made a few I think are correct, please correct these if they're wrong, and feel free to add other phrases.

what's the name of your boss? / what's your bosses name?
?que es el nombre de tu/su jefe?

your boss, what's his name?
tu/su jefe, ?que es su nombre?

what do you call your boss?
?como lo llamas tu/su jefe?
tu/su jefe, ?como lo llamas?

[your boss] What does he call himself?
?como se llama él?
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