Ejercicio 23-5

Ejercicio 23-5
 

I am working on a chapter about prepositions. This section is specifically about compound prepositions. The exercise involves questions in Spanish which require "personal" answers in Spanish. Please correct my answers (in bold). Thank you!!

1) ¿Terminas tu trabajo a tiempo?
La mayoría de las veces termino mi trabajo a tiempo.

2) ¿Qué haces típicamente a mediados de la semana?
Típicamente asisto un ensayo de mi orquesta a mediados de la semana.

3) ¿Estás a favor de una causa especial para ti?
Estoy a favor de alguna causa que avanza la educación de niños desfavorecidos.

4) ¿Qué pones debajo de la cama?
No hay nada debajo de la cama.

5) ¿Vas a pie a tu trabajo o a la escuela? ¿Por qué no o por qué si?
No voy a pie a mi trabajo porque la escuela está demasiado lejos de mi casa.

6) ¿Qué hay cerca de tu casa?
Sólo hay otras casas cerca de mi casa.

7) ¿Qué vas a hacer a fines de este verano?
A fines de este verano voy a ir a Colorado con una amiga.

Comments above

Muy buena la ayuda de Angélica! Hasta me quedé pensando sobre mood! :thinking:

Hasta que caí. :)

Thanks, Malila!

Sorry, Chileno - I don't understand your use of the word "Hasta" here (either time) or "caí".... :(

"¿Estás a favor de una causa especial para ti?" sounds weird.

About your answer there are some problems in different levels -most of them fostered by the strange wording of the question-. First: the cause is not advancing right now but its purpose is the advance, then subjunctive "avance". But also a matter of logic because "una causa especial para ti de la que estás a favor" can't be an indefinite cause "una causa que ...". Maybe with some editing:

-¿Estás a favor de alguna causa que resulte especial para ti?
- No, pero estaría a favor de alguna causa que promoviera el avance de los niños más desfavorecidos.

Hasta (me) = (I) even
Hasta que caí = Until I understood ["caer" is colloquial for "suddenly understand" or "suddenly find the lacking element or getting rid of the one that blocked understanding" but with a great deal of "it should have been easier, I don't know why I didn't". It plays with the idea of one not understanding as a consequence of having somewhat being tricked]

First of all, I wonder if the author of this book is a native English-speaker, because the wording of the original question sounds perfectly fine to me. I don't really see your "issue" with it.... :thinking:

Second, I'm not sure how you re-wrote my answer to begin with "no", when clearly it is "yes"?? :thinking:

Third, in the answer, what happened to "la educación"? That is the key to my answer. Not merely causes that support disadvantaged children ... but specifically causes that advance the education of disadvantaged children..... :thinking:

So when he said "Hasta me quedé pensando sobre mood!", that would mean "I even am left thinking about mood"? I'm still not sure I see what he meant by that.....

Are you saying that he was thinking about mood until he understood after being tricked? What was tricky? I still don't get the "hasta me" part........... :banghead:

= until it dawned on me
until it hit me
until the penny dropped

Right - that was the second time he used "hasta". But what about the first time? "Hasta me quedé pensando sobre mood" - if "hasta" means "even" there, I don't really get it.....

I understood it as 'it even got me thinking about mood' :thinking:

Uyyy ... okay, taking some time to step away from it, I understand. Doh! I had "hasta = until" so in my head that I missed the alternate meanings. Now the whole thing makes sense to me. THANKS everyone!

A good example of "caer" (80% of "the penny drop" or "it hit me") may be -I'm not saying it is the cause- our friend thinking about something having to do with the attitude (mood) in the sentence, to suddenly realize it was about the grammatical mood.

Lou Ann, about your example: you chose "alguna" and "avanza la educación de...". "Alguna" means you currently have no specific cause your are supporting (it would've been different if you said "cualquier" or "toda"), and you are saying your support is to the advance of education itself -its techniques- over having educated people -which is a "side" effect of the first-. In Spanish "educación" implies automatically advance so you can support "una mejor educación" or "más educación" or "una educación más completa" or "más integral" or "más moderna", but "el avance de la educación" means education itself is to advance. I simply chose the most ambiguous version that matched all what I understood you could be trying to say.

Ahhhh.... Okay, so instead of "avanza", maybe something to do with "mejorar"? Like "cualquier causa que mejora la educación de los niños más desfavorecidos"?

I'm still a bit stuck on the structure of the question vs. answer that you gave above (I changed it to blue). I hate to translate it to English, but I will do so in this to show you why I'm having some difficulty with it. It seems to me that your re-wording of the question is saying: "Are you in favor of some cause that is special to you?" And your answer, "No, put I am in favor of any cause that promotes the advance of disadvantaged children." I still don't see how you answer "no" and then immediately give an example in the affirmative....

mejorar la educación de los niños ---> you get enhanced education
una mejor educación para los niños ---> you get those children "enhanced"

Regarding the rest, I think we may have false cognates in "cause" and "causa". Spanish "causa" implies both undertaking and actual personal involvement. And you are right, I got entangled as I really meant "apoyas alguna causa en especial". "Estar a favor de..." has a wide meaning in colloquial terms as it ranges from "actively support something" or "approve" to "choose" or "prefer"

So, in the interest of looking for a response that I can wrap my arms around, can we try this (including your re-worded prompt-question):

-¿Estás a favor de alguna causa que resulte especial para ti?
- Si, estoy a favor de cualquier causa que mejora la educación de los niños más desfavorecidos.

???

"Avanzar" is not a transitive verb, so that's why I suggested you to use a different structure, like "que haga avanzar la educación de los niños".
I think you could have figured it out if you had thought about the whole sentence and the meaning in Spanish of the verb. If it had been just a matter of conjugation, I wouldn't have been so "baroque" ;)


Almost.



Memorizing verb lists is like memorizing a logarithm table to calculate them.
...but oh well. :rolleyes:

"...que mejore..."

Sí, estoy a favor de cualquier causa que (asegure/promueva/provea/favorezca/tienda a) una mejor educación de los niños menos afortunados/favorecidos.

Wait, my dictionary and the RAE say that "avanzar" is both transitive and intransitive. That's why I thought I could use it in that way. Same with "mejorar". "Haga avanzar" is a little bit too much subjunctive for me to wrap my arms around right now ..... sooooooon..... I honestly don't know that I could have figured it out for myself ... yet. I'm just not there yet......

I don't know any other way to learn these verbs other than to memorize them. If I want to do logs, I use a table or a calculator. But I don't want to walk around telling people to wait for me to say something in Spanish while I look up the verb to see if it requires a preposition..... Do you have a better suggestion for me?

But I thought you said that the phrase "una mejor educación para los niños" means that you get those children "enhanced". That's not what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say that I want to improve the education given to disadvantaged children, because there is such a HUGE difference in the actual quality of education received by "advantaged" students and "disadvantaged" students.... ???

:lol::lol: I almost posted the same. To be honest, I didn't think the log tables were a good parallel because you don't normally need an instant recall of logs. If you do, nobody would invite you to parties. :rolleyes:

Oh! So it should be "mejorar la calidad de la educación que se les brinda a los niños menos afortunados" because your goal is having children enhanced by means of education (knowledge, skills, proficiency, social abilities, "cultura") and not education (pedagogy, "clases") enhanced with random results on disadvantaged kids. That is what happens when one tries to extrapolate a linguistic model from one language to the other -I'm expert on doing that-. In Spanish "mi educación me impide contestarle a algunas personas como se merecen" pero "la educación que recibí me ha hecho ser metódico" and "me educaron en la idea de que las faltas de ortografía son malas, así que tengo pocas, incluso en inglés, idioma en el que prácticamente nadie me educó y el que casi aprendí solo". It looks to me that English "education" means Spanish "proceso educativo" and "educación institucionalizada" and not "educación" at all.

Mind you, when the verb has a clear idea of physical movement: "1. tr. Adelantar, mover o prolongar hacia adelante", it is transitive; but "4. intr. Adelantar, progresar o mejorar en la acción, condición o estado", which is the meaning you were using, is not.

It didn't seem to me so far from your known structures, but I may have a wrong perception. Never mind though... you'd get there eventually anyway.


Yes, use them. :)

What I'm saying (without any kind of success, but it's ok), is that you can't learn a language by heart, that's the job of dictionaries.
You can only memorize some basic principles, and apply them, use them, repeat them, make mistakes, get corrected, learn again, and then you'll start feeling the patterns and how language flows. The right sentences with unknown items will come spontaneously over time.