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Subjunctive or infinitive?Practice Spanish or English here. All replies to a thread should be in the same language as the first post. |
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#1
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Subjunctive or infinitive?
I'm writing a composition for class, and I have a question about this sentence:
"Incluso la abuela venía de su cuarto, cojeando con su bastón, para mirar un pobre pajarito (que) perder/perdiera su cabeza." It's supposed to say, "Even the grandmother would come out of her bedroom, hobbling on her cane, to watch a poor little bird lose its head." Just the infinitive doesn't look right to me, but I'm not sure if I'm using the subjunctive right either. Help please? |
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#2
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You could also say, "cómo un pajarito perdía la cabeza" (more or less literally, "how a little bird would lose its head") Not sure if I told you too much... but check on the red words for a better Spanish wording...
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Lo propio de la verdad es que se basta a sí misma, aquel que la posee no intenta convencer a nadie. "An enemy is somebody who flatters you. A friend is somebody who criticizes the living daylights out of you." |
#3
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As for the words in red, would it be better to use salía and ver, respectively? If not, what do you suggest, and why? My instructor won't correct things like this. If "venir" means "to come" and I use it to mean "to come," he will leave it as written, even if "salir" would have been a better choice. And I don't blame him; he doesn't have the time to nitpick every less-than-perfect word choice when there are students still struggling to understand the basic concepts. So I am very grateful for any fine-tuning in my Spanish because I won't receive it anywhere else! |
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You are welcome.
You got it right. (salía/ver) I don’t see any reason not to be as precise as possible. Not that one has to be literal, but if one can be exact in communicating concepts, while being as idiomatic as possible in the target language, the better. Of course, no reason to nitpick unnecessarily... and to concentrate on what you are teaching, learning one thing at a time, makes sense, but as you progress you can always set your standard a little bit higher and higher as you go...
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Lo propio de la verdad es que se basta a sí misma, aquel que la posee no intenta convencer a nadie. "An enemy is somebody who flatters you. A friend is somebody who criticizes the living daylights out of you." Last edited by JPablo; March 27, 2012 at 12:09 PM. |
#5
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Estuve intentado hacer otras frases "para mirar a un pobre pajarito perdiendo la cabeza", "para ver a un pobre pajarito perder la cabeza" (sin mirar) y yo creo que en este caso se adaptaría mejor. Mirar implica intención de ver y no se usan de la misma forma. Last edited by micho; April 02, 2012 at 05:04 PM. |
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