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Sentence structure

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Roxerz
December 05, 2015, 04:12 PM
I was doing a problem in class where we had to translate from English to Spanish examples. I translated it and then was corrected by native speakers and my teacher.

The example:
He frequently goes to Europe

I wrote:
Él va frecuentemente a Europa.

They said:
Él va a Europa frecuentemente.

I know from reading stuff in general in Spanish that they are right but I was forced to skip a level in Spanish (because there was no space) so I assume that they may have learned the technicalities. Since I started studying for GMAT, I realized I'm not as aware of English sentence construction styles either (passive, etc).

Is there a resource where I can learn why and how to fix this?

We have learned clauses for subjunctive such as:
Creo que he ido ahí
but a lot of times as I'm writing immediately what I'm thinking, I write:
he ido ahí, yo creo.

Is the second example wrong in Spanish? Sometimes I feel like I talk like Yoda..

Rusty
December 05, 2015, 04:21 PM
Spanish has a less strict word order than English.
What you wrote is correct. The correction given is correct. And 'frecuentemente' can also be said prior to the subject pronoun or prior to the verb.
The subject pronoun can be said last of all.

(Adding 'yo' in your last examples isn't necessary, except to add emphasis. It's perfectly fine to reverse the two clauses, as you did in your second example. It's OK in both languages.)

Many native speakers prefer to place the adverb close to the verb.

aleCcowaN
December 06, 2015, 12:48 AM
(El va a Europa) frecuentemente
El va (frecuentemente a Europa)

Doesn't English work the same way?

He frequently goes to Europe
He goes, frequently to Europe (but sometimes to other destinations)

Word order in Spanish is freer, but your choice is a bit ambiguous unless you are using an extremely formal style. And Spanish abhors ambiguity.

Creo que he ido ahí.
He ido ahí, creo. (right, and as you have said, it's writing as you think, or declaring a certainty -he ido ahí- and then, tuning it down -creo-)

I don't know of any resource to learn the gazillion of practical examples. I for one write down long lists of examples that I hadn't paid enough attention at the moment. For instance, the last one, a few hours ago:

(four judges on their feet = cuatro jueces de pie)
all four judges on their feet = los cuatro jueces de pie