• Canadian_Cabinet @lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      5 months ago

      Yeah but for does not translate into por in this context. The only word that works here is pero. There is no literal word for for (as in but) in Spanish and the closest approximation is pero. Source: I am Spanish

    • jopepa@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      5 months ago

      A Greek and Canadian disagreeing on Spanish makes me feel like my mono and thee quarters linguistic ass needs to try harder.

      • Canadian_Cabinet @lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        5 months ago

        Not Canadian, contrary to my username. I’m actually Spanish, so I imagine that I’m the one who would be correct considering it’s my native language

        • jopepa@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          edit-2
          5 months ago

          Am I supposed to believe you’re not furniture either? Nice try you shifty stack of maple drawers.

          Edit: ¿“Por” no es “for” en ingles?

          ¿Para qué no les dijiste cómo?

            • jopepa@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              5 months ago

              Isn’t it strange how languages have tons of homonyms we hardly notice while having synonyms for almost anything else? Thanks for sharing I’ll check that out.

          • flicker@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            5 months ago

            “Shifty stack of maple drawers” is this best thing I’ve read all week. Thank you for that.

          • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            5 months ago

            Prepositions are probably one of the parts of speech that is the hardest to translate in any language.

            I learned Swedish as a second language, and it feels like “at”, “for”, and “on” are completely randomly interchanged, even though each word has a direct translation and both Swedish and English are Germanic languages at their core. There are multiple forms of “to” in Swedish too.

            The “usage notes” section for the Swedish word for “On” is an experience lol
            https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/på#Usage_notes

            Luckily, they’re also the most forgiving part at any speech of mistranslate.

            • jopepa@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              5 months ago

              It’s no wonder doctors in linguistics dip into philosophy as often as they do, incredible minds to know enough languages to study them. Polyglots are cool

        • jopepa@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          5 months ago

          tbh between you and the Grecian parent comment I thought I might’ve uncovered the fediverse Greek mafia lol