Forming sentences

Forming sentences
 

Hi. I'm new to this site!

I'm not sure that this is in the correct place, but bare with me haha

I was looking at how to spell individual words in Spanish, and I looked at how to say I am 21 years old, except instead of searching the sentence I looked at each word. It came up as Yo soy vientiuno años viejo. But then I search as a sentence it came up as Tengo veintiún años. N

Why is it so different?

I'm a beginner so I don't quite know where to start. Forming sentences just looks really confusing in Spanish than in English but with practice hopefully I'll get there!

In Spanish we do not say it that way. We say; Tengo vientiuno años.
That would be, I have 21 years. That's the way we say it in Spanish.
In Italian we say it that same way too. You'll get use to it after awhile.
I didn't speak Spanish either.

The structure of Spanish is quite different from the structure of English. Translating word-for-word is impossible: your word-for-word translation ("yo soy veintiuno años viejo") is basically a substitution code, Spanish words with English grammar. To native speakers of Spanish who do not know any English this word-for-word translation sounds like gibberish.

To learn Spanish you will need to learn (a) Spanish grammar and syntax [the rules of phrase and sentence structure], (b) Spanish semantics [the range of meanings of individual words], and (c) Spanish style [cultural preferences for how to express different types of ideas].

As you discovered, the usual translation equivalent of "I am twenty-one years old" is "tengo veintiún años". A more-or-less literal translation of this sentence into English is "I have twenty-one years".

The relationships between the words in "tengo veintiún años" are like this:

[tengo] [[veintiún] [años]]

The structure is [verb] [direct object].

[verb] = tengo = "I have". First person singular simple present indicative form of the verb "tener" = "to have/hold/possess/own" (depending on context). In addition to uniquely and unambiguously identifying the tense, this verb form also uniquely and unambiguously identifies the subject as "I"; it is not necessary to include any other words to identify the subject.

[direct object] = veintiún años = "twenty-one years". This noun phrase consists of 2 words:

veintiún = "twenty-one". This word is one of the two masculine forms of the adjective; it is used only before a masculine plural noun that it modifies. In all other contexts one uses the other masculine form "veintiuno". In form this adjective is singular, but in function this adjective is plural. This singular form/plural function behavior is true of many but not all numbers in Spanish.

años = "years". Masculine plural noun; the singular form of the noun is "año". Note that the word must be spelled as "año" with the letter "ñ", which is distinct from the letter "n"; these two letters have different pronunciations and spell different words.

And you're right: at first Spanish is confusing. You may find it easier to start by learning a few sentences, and using them as a basis to start getting an idea for how Spanish grammar works. Over time you'll learn the individual pieces and learn how to fit them all together.

Actually, 'tengo veintiún años' is quite right.

Word-for-word translation will seldom work, Ria. A much better approach to learning the language is to get a novel written in Spanish and then translate it into English. This will introduce you to how Spanish looks in written form and will teach you all the grammar (you'll have to refer to a dictionary quite often at first and should take note of how the word was used - subject, object, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction, etc.) You'll see that subjects and verbs must agree in person and number and the adjectives and nouns agree in gender and number.

The final vowel of 'uno' is omitted when the number precedes a masculine noun. For example:
un año
veintiún años

I didn't think at first that Spanish people spoke that differently. I guess I need to learn a lot more about saying things the way Spanish people do even in English.

Thanks for this. I read through it but it's a lot to take in haha so I will re-visit this again later.

Good idea. Maybe I should start with a Spanish childrens book? That would suit me as I work with children and it might be a simple start haha (my key child at work is Spanish conveniently).

I kind of understand this. I'm going to come back to it though as it's confusing me a little haha

Thanks!

True. The same thing is true between any pair of languages. And sometimes between two different varieties of the same language. (Have you heard the quote "The United States and the United Kingdom are two countries divided by a common language"?)

Lol, yes, I kind of overdid it a little. At your level you don't need to understand all of the nitty-gritty details yet; as you learn the language more and more of them will become natural to you until it all becomes second nature.

That is one way to start; if it works for you, go for it!

Yup, nitty-gritty details. Coming back to this (when to use "veintiuno", "veintiún" or "veintiuna") later makes sense, especially when you've progressed a little further and have a better context for understanding it. This is true of many fine points of a language; some things are more basic, and mastering them first gives you a context for understanding other aspects of the language.

Yeah, slowly but surely I'm getting there though. I do believe I can really do this. I'm might read some people's posts, the ones that have written in Spanish and try to uncover what they're saying haha it's good to know that I can come on here whenever I need help.