Discover Spanish With Us » Usage

Medio ambiente

Stephanie — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 03:28:03 +0000

Your medio ambiente is your environment. This refers to your cultural, social or natural environment.

Fuga de agua

Stephanie — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:38:37 +0000

We had a pipe break in the street in front of our house recently. While trying to figure out who to callÂ we found the phrase fuga de agua. Literally it means a flight of water but is used to refer to water escaping accidently.

No deje piedras sobre el pavimento

Stephanie — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 03:00:15 +0000

No deje piedras sobre el pavimento is a sign we see frequently while traveling through Mexico. It means, do not leave stones on the pavement.

It’s an interesting and necessary sign that stems from people placing stones on the road behind their car to warn others they are stopped or broken down. The problem arises when these people then drive off and leave the stones in the road creating another road hazard.

So if you ever breakdown por favor, no deje piedras sobre el pavimento.

Bien

Stephanie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:19:14 +0000

In its most benign form bien means good. Â¿Como estÃ¡? (How are you?) Bien. (Good, fine.)

Bien can also mean muy. Those shoes are bien feo (very ugly).

Make it plural, bienes, and you have goods, material possessions.

Aguafiestas

Stephanie — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 22:55:27 +0000

Aguafiestas is from the two words, agua and fiestas. Agua being water and fiestas parties, a wet party. But more properly it is a slang term for a wet blanket, a kill joy, a party pooper, or someone who takes all the fun out.

DemÃ¡s

Stephanie — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 21:28:44 +0000

DemÃ¡s is usually seen in the phrase lo demÃ¡s or los demÃ¡s which means the others or the rest.

It is however also used as por demÃ¡s to mean something useless.

And also as por lo demÃ¡s meaning otherwise.

Gustar

David — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 05:01:58 +0000

The verb gustar is most commonly associated with the word like. It would be used in most places that we use the word like in English. However, it is not a grammatical equivalent, which is why English speakers have such a hard time knowing how to use gustar. But if you think of gustar as being a functional equivalent of please (as in, that pleases me), you will be much better off.

The basic problem with thinking of like and gustar as equals is that they have a different perspective on the one doing the action.

In the phrase “I like peanut butter,” it is me who is doing the action of liking the peanut butter. But to say “the peanut butter pleases me” has the peanut butter doing the action to me.

The Spanish gustar is much more equivalent to please. You don’t say “yo gusto el chocolate” because that says “I please the chocolate.” You would instead say “me gusta el chocolate” or “the chocolate pleases me.”

When struggling with the usage of gustar, try to think of its equivalent as being the word please and you will have a grammatical equivalent.

Por tanto

Stephanie — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 04:31:24 +0000

At church the other day, I noticed that a couple of the verses we read started with the phrase por tanto. I couldn’t reason out the meaning to myself. I knew that tanto was much or a lot and the verses just did not make sense with this meaning.

One of the verses was:

Por tanto, id, y haced discÃpulos a todas las naciones, Mateo 28:19

After studying the phrase I found that por tanto means because of this or for this reason. The verse makes much more sense now.

Gato

David — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 05:45:14 +0000

Anyone who has learned some Spanish knows that gato is cat. But did you know it has other meanings?

One of the strangest is that a car jack is called a gato. On certain types of jacks they look similar to a cat when arching its back. This action pushes the car up. That is the only explanation I can see for calling it a gato.

Gato is also the kid’s game that we call tic-tac-toe in the US. I am not sure if it is because the grid looks like cat scratches, or that if no one wins we say the cat wins.

Then there are idiomatic usages of the word. One is, aquÃ hay gato encerrado which means there is something fishy going on here.

Â¿Te parece?

David — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 01:59:25 +0000

The words say “it appears to you” but when asked as a question, it means “do you like it?” I think it could be translated, “how does it appear to you?” It seems to always be used when asking someone if they like what they see.

When we were house hunting for some friends I first became aware of this phrase. It seemed that every house we saw got followed up with the question “Y, Â¿te parece?“