Ponerse en contacto

[laepelba]

I ran across this phrase today a couple of times, and am not quite sure how it fits into a sentence structure....

Is the "ponerse" reflexive or just pronomial? So should the pronoun correspond to the subject?

I wanted to say "Luis already contacted me..." to a Spanish-speaking friend. I said "Luis ya se puso en contacto conmigo..." Is that correct?

So are the following ideas correct?
- Te pones en countacto con Silvia. (You contact Silvia.)
- Se pone en contacto con el grupo. (He contacted the group.)

Etc.?

Thank you!

[chileno]

Originally Posted by laepelba

I ran across this phrase today a couple of times, and am not quite sure how it fits into a sentence structure....

Is the "ponerse" reflexive or just pronomial? So should the pronoun correspond to the subject?

I wanted to say "Luis already contacted me..." to a Spanish-speaking friend. I said "Luis ya se puso en contacto conmigo..." Is that correct?

So are the following ideas correct?
- Te pones en countacto con Silvia. (You contact Silvia.)
- Se pone en contacto con el grupo. (He contacted the group.)

Etc.?

Thank you!

"Get in contact" is a bit different than "contacting"

Luis already contacted me = Luis ya se contactó conmigo

Luis already got in contact with me = Luis ya se puso en contacto conmigo

See? Sí?

[CrOtALiTo]

Here I will write some examples, I hope that they being correct.

Santiago got contacted me.
Santiago has contacted with me.

Another attempts.

Already Santiago got contacted with me before.

The Chileno's sentences are correct.

[laepelba]

Originally Posted by chileno

"Get in contact" is a bit different than "contacting"

Luis already contacted me = Luis ya se contactó conmigo

Luis already got in contact with me = Luis ya se puso en contacto conmigo

See? Sí?

Well, I can't think of a situation in which I would use "get in contact" differently than "contact".

Is it possible to say "Luis ya me contactó"? Or is it "contactarse"?

I guess that doesn't really answer my question, which is as follows:
- is "ponerse en contacto" pronomial or reflexive?
- to whom does the pronoun refer?

It would be the same two questions, then, also if it's "contactarse" and not "contactar".....

Originally Posted by CrOtALiTo

Here I will write some examples, I hope that they being are correct.

Santiago got contacted me. Santiago got in contact with me.
Santiago has contacted with me. Santiago has contacted me.

Another attempts.

Already Santiago already got in contacted with me before.

The Chileno's sentences are correct.

Thanks, guys. I'll keep asking until I can understand.....

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by laepelba

Thanks, guys. I'll keep asking until I can understand.....

Why can't you just translate literally word-for-word?

no deje de ponerse en contacto con nuestra oficina
be sure to put yourself in contact with our office

This strikes me as reflexive because you are doing something to yourself. But I'm not sure. Anyway - the English here sounds fine to me, and I can't really see where the problem is.

[laepelba]

Well, I was trying to avoid the trivial details of this ... let's see if I can be concise...

A friend of mine has some professional contacts in Buenos Aires and she wanted to get us connected. She e-mailed them and sent them MY email address. One of them has contacted me several times over the past two days. Yesterday, she sent another email to them (copied me), not knowing that Luis had already been in touch with me. Her email was in Spanish, so I answered her in Spanish.

But when I first wrote her, I said "Luis me ha contactado..." Then, later in the afternoon, I happened to be listening to a podcast (based in Madrid) where they said something like "We don't use 'contactar' like the English 'to contact'. We say 'ponerse en contacto'." But then they didn't really elaborate.

So I was looking it up at a different Spanish language discussion forum, and it seemed to me that it would be better to say "ponerse en contacto" than what I said. I just couldn't figure out who the "se" is.....

[Perikles]

Ah ha. But the verb is quite simple - it means to put oneself in contact with. The se = oneself.

[laepelba]

Originally Posted by Perikles

Ah ha. But the verb is quite simple - it means to put oneself in contact with. The se = oneself.

Which verb? I was asking about ponerse, but I think (??) that chileno used contactarse. And that IS what I was asking ... if it's reflexive or simply pronomial (or neither).... So it sounds like you're saying one of them (which?) is reflexive? That's not the use in English. So ... my original sentence (Luis me ha contactó) was incorrect ... ??

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by laepelba

Which verb? I was asking about ponerse, but I think (??) that chileno used contactarse. And that IS what I was asking ... if it's reflexive or simply pronomial (or neither).... So it sounds like you're saying one of them (which?) is reflexive? That's not the use in English. So ... my original sentence (Luis me ha contactó) was incorrect ... ??

I was talking only about the verb (or verbal phrase) ponerse en contacto con = to contact. I've never heard of contactar, but maybe it's correct as well.

I was commenting that the verbal phrase is totally comprehensible to me because you can translate it literally into English to put oneself in contact with. This sounds totally normal to me. I could say something like

There was a ridiculous problem with the software package so finally I had to put myself in contact with a specialist engineer to solve it.

Do you find that odd English? (Sorry if I'm confusing the issue )

[irmamar]

Ponerse en contacto: pronominal.

It can't be reflexive (a mí misma); in any case it could be reciprocal (ponerse en contacto una persona con otra), although it is not, since the action should be executed at the same time. So, it is pronominal.