¡Hola!

[programador]

¡Hola mundo!

Tengo dos gatos y leche para ellos. Un gato es beben leche.

¿Entender?

[Julvenzor]

Do you mean?

Hi world!

I have two cats and milk for them. One cat is drinking milk.

Is it understable?

¡Hola mundo!

Tengo dos gatos y leche para ellos. Un gato está bebiendo leche.

¿Se entiende?

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by programador

¡Hola mundo!

Tengo dos gatos y leche para ellos.
Un gato bebe leche.

¿Entienden?

The simple present tense is all you need in order to communicate the idea that one of your cats is drinking milk.
This is because the present tense translates several different ways into English, and one of them happens to be 'is drinking'.
Un gato bebe leche.


There is also a progressive, or continuous, form of the verb that English-speaking students of Spanish tend to overuse. It is formed by using a conjugated form of 'estar' plus the present participle of the verb. The present participle is called 'el gerundio' in Spanish.
The gerundio of the verb 'beber', for example, is bebiendo. So, if you place the singular third-person conjugation of 'estar' in front of the gerundio, the translation is still 'is drinking', but with the sense of the action being in progress.
Un gato está bebiendo leche.

This is what you were trying to write. You thought you needed to translate both 'is' and 'drinking'. But, as I stated above, all you need to use is the simple present tense.


Also, it may interest you to know that 'tomar' is used more often than 'beber'.

Un gato toma leche.

[programador]

It's confusing. I'm using Rosetta Stone and that's what they've shown me so far. But I'm only on lesson 1. I'm hoping they will explain it better later.

Un gato toma leche means "A cat is drinking" according to Google. How do you say "One cat is drinking?"

Uno gato toma leche

Edit: I'm wondering if it's better if I don't use Google translator? It seems to make things really confusing. I'm not sure how accurate it actually is.

[Rusty]

'A cat' and 'one cat' are said the same way in Spanish. The distinction between the indefinite article and the determiner (the ordinal) comes from the context.

Un gato toma leche.

A cat is drinking milk.
-AND-
One cat is drinking milk.


Machine translators can produce erroneous translations, especially when there isn't enough context. Given a single sentence, it couldn't tell that you wrote the ordinal instead of the article (they are both spelled the same way, after all).

[programador]

I only speak English so far, so it could be English that is strange. From my point-of-view, it seems like Spanish is really strange. In this case you wouldn't have any idea what the person was saying, until you heard the entire conversation.

It seems strange how someone could read a language like that. For example, "manazana rojo". From what I've learned for far, you say the color after the object. In English we would say "rojo manazana".

Tengo dos manazanas azul seems really awkward to me (aside from the fact that they are blue ). I want to say Tengo dos azul manazanas.

[poli]

manzanas azules

In Spanish you can use the adjective first, but not habitually.

The same goes for English. We use the adjective after the noun sometimes, and it sounds poetic. For example: the ocean blue/
the thrill devine.

English is similar to Spanish in that we share Latin roots.

[Julvenzor]

Hi Programador,

Every language has its idiosyncrasies and its own set of rules. All languages also have ambiguities which are amended by context and by using other complements. I don't understand why you enunciate: "In this case you wouldn't have any idea what the person was saying, until you heard the entire conversation."

I don't know whether you've yet learnt that, in Spanish, the person who speaks or carries out the action of the verb (subject) is expressed by its verb ending:

I have = Tengo
You have = Tienes (informal) /Tiene (formal)
He/She has = Tiene
We have = Tenemos
You (all) = Tenéis (informal in Spain) / Tienen (formal in Spain, informal in LA)
They have = Tienen

Adjetive agreement is the main difficulty for native English speakers at the beginning. Learners are usually told that adjectives go behind nouns in Spanish. However, it's not always true. We make a distintion according to their objectivity and their subjectivity.

Objectivity = Adjective goes behing
Subjectivity = Adjective goes before

"A red apple" is an objective statement, thus we say "una manzana roja".
Manzana is a feminine noun in singular, we must agree the adjective with it.

"A red toys", equally, is an objective statement: "unos juguetes rojos".
Juguetes is a masculine noun in plural, we must agree the adjective with it.

Articles are also adjectives: un/una/unos/unas

In sentences like "I have two blue apples" (Tengo dos manzanas azules) the ordinal is always placed before the noun and you write "azules" behind because it's a fact (objectivity).

Important cases:

He's a poor boy (no money) = Es un chico pobre.
He's a poor boy (luckless) = Es un pobre chico.

The adjective just changes of place according its implied meaning.

He's a big person = Es una persona grande.
He's a great person = Es una gran persona.

The same adjective changes of place and form according its implied meaning.

A pleasure.

[programador]

Originally Posted by Julvenzor

I don't understand why you enunciate: "In this case you wouldn't have any idea what the person was saying, until you heard the entire conversation."

It's hard to explain. Learning a new language is weird at first. I'm not finding it that hard, at all. Spanish just seems weird to me at this point. I think I say that because I'm using a combination of learning methods. I've also been using Google Translator, and sometimes the translations throw me off. Google Translator makes it seem like you can't read Spanish from left to right. Because as I type, the entire context of the translation is changed by the translator.

I think it's just going to take some time for me to get used to it. I've been speaking English my entire life, so as far as I'm concerned English does it correctly, and Spanish is weird; however, I've been told by other language learners that English is actually the weird language.

Like you said, each language has its own rules, and at first, you tend to run into things that seem strange.

Thanks for the help everyone.

[Julvenzor]

Google Translate is useful for translating simple words and to obtain a reference. It fails a lot when translating complex sentences.

Yes, for me, as a native Spanish speaker, English is often a mix of "inconsistencies". Otherwise, it makes sense merging words in order to create a new one. We don't tend so much to that way, but we use another word. For example:

Saddle = Silla
Bag = Bolso/Bolsa

Saddle + bag = Saddlebag = Alforja

[programador]

That's one of the things that have been confusing me. The fact the Spanish seems to invent a new word, instead of using two that already exist, like you have just pointed out.

In English, I would say "I have", but in Spanish, I believe its "Tengo". So they've combined 2 words into another word that is completely different.

That happens a lot in Spanish. It also appears that Spanish doesn't use contractions. Instead they just add an "s" or "n", or something similar.

Even though it's confusing to me. I'm actually starting to like Spanish more than I like English.

[Julvenzor]

The explanation is that, simply, Spanish has been adopting words and other terms from different languages throughout history instead of combining the existing ones. "Alfoja", for example, comes from Classic Arabic. There are certain fields where Spanish is rich in foreigns words. In a remote past it took words from Arabic, Iberian, Celtic, Old German; after, Italian and French and, today, English. Equally, English has borrowed words from French, German, Latin, etc.

You're right. Spanish has two contractions only: a + el = al; de + el = del
Unlike English, these two contraction are mandatory to use always.

The time of the impact = El momento del impacto.

Words and verbs work in a separate way. The latter ones must be conjugated. "Tengo" is the conjugated "I" form in present indicative of the verb "tener". There are regular and irregular verbs. I recommend you to learn, little by little, the distinct models.

Spanish has a lot of tenses, althogth, evidently, not all of them are used frequently or in the same way than English. As Rusty explained, we tend to not to utilize "gerund forms (-ing)" as much as English.

Here is the model for "cantar", a regular verb belonging to the "first conjugation". There are three widespread conjugation models: -ar, -er and -ir.

http://conjugador.reverso.net/conjug...bo-cantar.html

Indicativo

Presente
(yo) canto
(tú) cantas
(él) canta
(nosotros) cantamos
(vosotros) cantáis
(ellos) cantan
Pretérito imperfecto
(yo) cantaba
(tú) cantabas
(él) cantaba
(nosotros) cantábamos
(vosotros) cantabais
(ellos) cantaban

Futuro
(yo) cantaré
(tú) cantarás
(él) cantará
(nosotros) cantaremos
(vosotros) cantaréis
(ellos) cantarán

Condicional
(yo) cantaría
(tú) cantarías
(él) cantaría
(nosotros) cantaríamos
(vosotros) cantaríais
(ellos) cantarían
Pretérito perfecto simple
(yo) canté
(tú) cantaste
(él) cantó
(nosotros) cantamos
(vosotros) cantasteis
(ellos) cantaron

Firstly, focus on these five tenses.

A pleasure.