Year

Year
 

I am trying to say he was born in 1840 in Spanish. Would it be Él nació en el catorce de mil ochociento cuarenta?

mil ochocientos cuarenta = eighteen forty (1840)
Why did you add 'el catorce de'? That isn't in the English version. You may have also meant to state a certain month.

There.

So then if I was saying a certain say and month it would be Él nació en el catorce de noviembre de mil ochocientos cuarenta?

You would use "el catorce" and then the month and then the year...

Wouldn't that be the same in your native language?

Dropping the preposition 'en', which is what you meant by writing only 'el catorce', is possible English. Just as valid in English is 'on the fourteenth'. In other words, it's possible to say "He was born the fourteenth of November" or "He was born on the fourteenth of November." The latter would be heard much more often than the former.

To illustrate, lots of people are born on the fourth of July. Do a quoted internet search for "He was born on the fourth of July." Notice the number of hits. Next, remove the preposition 'on' from the quoted search and notice the number of hits. (Switch 'he' with 'she' in case you think the quoted search yields false hits.)

That is why English-speaking learners of Spanish insert the preposition 'en' where it is not expected in Spanish. ;)

Well, there is no way anyone can translate that directly either.

If I see "He was born on the 4th of July", translated literally word for word to Spanish, which is my native language, the result would be :
"El fue nacido en el cuarto de Julio". At that point my Spanish nativeness would tell me that that has to be translated as "El nació el 4 de julio"

It would be the same process for English natives to translate from Spanish.

I'm sure we're seeing eye-to-eye on these points. I was just trying to explain why we learners of another tongue come up with the oddities that we do. We need to learn how words work together and hardly ever trust that a word-for-word translation is possible.

With my method, one learns by writing. This writing is done by transcribing from the foreign language. The interpreting it to the native language.

That's all.