The phrase “por más que + verbo” is part of a two clause construction and means “As much as…” or “No matter how much…”. Examples in English include “As much as I try, I can’t seem to find the problem” / “No matter how much I tell her, she doesn’t want to understand.” These sentences […]
Category: Temas especiales
Se me hace que…
While living in a small village in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, I came across a grammatical form which I had never been taught in any classroom. After visiting a friend’s daughter, I was asked, “¿Cómo se te hizo Norma?” My brain, of course, went into overtime trying to determine what the question meant: “How […]
That pesky “se” – Part III
So far we’ve discussed “se” when it’s used reflexively, reciprocally and passively. We’ve also seen a number of common words that change meaning when you add “se” to them. Today we’ll look at two more uses which are every bit as common and important; namely, the “accidental se” and the “se” that isn’t really “se”. […]
That pesky “se” – part II
In my last post, I described some of the more common uses of that pesky pronoun “se” which seems to crop up everywhere in Spanish. We discussed the reflexive, reciprocal and passive uses of “se”. In this and in the next post, I want to dive a little deeper and examine some uses that are conceptually […]
That pesky “se”
One of the most challenging aspects of Spanish can be spelled with two letters: “se”. This pesky little word seems to crop up in almost every other sentence and has innumerable meanings. I thought I’d dedicate this article and the next to some of its most common uses… 1) “Sé” of saber: We’ll start with this one […]
Haber de + verbo / deber de + verbo
While living in Mexico, I once heard the following expression: “Se te ha de figurar”. All of my grammatical knowledge was insufficient to decipher its meaning and I wrote it down immediately, hoping that the internet might resolve my confusion. It was then that I discovered a construction which has since cropped up dozens of […]
Hubiera
Intermediate and advanced students of Spanish learn that the word “hubiera” is used as the past subjunctive and often appears in conditional sentences such as “Si hubiera sabido, no habría ido” (If I had known, I wouldn’t have gone)***. Confusion comes, however, when one hears a sentence such as “Si hubiera sabido, no hubiera ido”, […]
Verle la cara a alguien
Taken literally, verle la cara a alguien translates “to see someone’s face”, but the meaning it carries is quite different. This is, in fact, a fairly common but not intuitive expression which means “to take someone for a fool” or “to rip someone of”. It’s used a lot in Mexican Spanish but, from my research, appears […]
Dar por / dar + sustantivo
The verb dar is, without a doubt, one of the most common words in the Spanish language. Basic dictionaries define it as “to give”, but this overlooks the endless idiomatic constructions which Spanish speakers can make with this seemingly innocuous word. Today I simply wish to focus on a few common usages which I’ve recorded in my […]
Vuelta (II)
This week’s post is a continuation of our exploration of the uses of vuelta, one of the most ubiquitous words in the Spanish language. Today I’ll offer a few idiomatic uses of this word which you may encounter in conversation. 1) a la vuelta: This phrase has two meanings which depend upon context. It can mean […]