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The concepting of noticing

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hypersport
Senior Member
United States
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216 posts - 307 votes 
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 49 of 56
14 December 2010 at 3:16am | IP Logged 
No, you're missing the point.

My point isn't to beat down s allard.   My point is to show that the word "hasta" doesn't mean "desde" (at least in this context) and the two sentences aren't interchangeable. They are completely different.

The problem is that people come into a thread like this and take for granted that what was said is correct. Even s allard is of the belief that the two sentences mean the same thing, chalking it up to something he read about obscure usage of hasta. They don't.

All this does is lead to more confusion for anyone trying to learn Spanish, especially when someone like Andy E who claims to speak Spanish can't see the error and casually agrees that it's just a regional usage.
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Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 50 of 56
14 December 2010 at 3:20am | IP Logged 
But it IS a regional usage, Andy E is right (link see entry 1d). The only thing is that the initial conversation seems a bit odd. I do also wonder about it being used with a stative verb (estar), which I haven't read before, but if a native said it then it's right. Here are some more examples from my dictionary (Collins) where this usage is listed as being used in parts of Mexico, Central America, and Columbia:-

hasta mañana viene - he's not coming until tomorrow
lo hizo hasta el martes - he didn't do it until tuesday
hasta hoy lo conocí - I didn't meet him until today

¿A qué horas están abiertos mañana?/Estamos acá hasta las diez./¿Hasta las diez de la noche?/Desde las diez de la mañana.

Roughly translated that would (I think) mean:

What time are you open tomorrow?
We're not here until 10
Until 10 at night?
From 10 in the morning

A bit of an odd conversation, maybe it really happened like that, maybe memory has distorted it, but what Andy E said is correct, I have heard of this.

Edited by Random review on 14 December 2010 at 3:42am

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Andy E
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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1651 posts - 1939 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, French

 
 Message 51 of 56
14 December 2010 at 9:24am | IP Logged 
hypersport wrote:
All this does is lead to more confusion for anyone trying to learn Spanish, especially when someone like Andy E who claims to speak Spanish can't see the error and casually agrees that it's just a regional usage.


It's not a question of claiming anything for myself - it is a regional usage . Any idiot who can use a dictionary (try it) can verify this for themselves. I've now checked four different sources - including the Real Academia Española - and every single one notes this use of hasta.

And just to help you out since you can't or won't look it up for yourself here's a link:

RAE defintion of hasta

A further point is that's it's no good reconstructing imaginary conversations between the two parties - I wasn't there and neither were you.
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hypersport
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5873 days ago

216 posts - 307 votes 
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 52 of 56
15 December 2010 at 1:09am | IP Logged 
Yeah, you're right Andy when you say I won't look it up. Rarely used and obscure usage of the language doesn't interest me. Proving this usage exists with 4 different sources doesn't interest me either. I speak Spanish with a lot of different native speakers and I use a lot of native materials daily. I know how people speak and I know when something sounds off. That doesn't mean that I recognize slangs and ways of speaking from all over, hardly. What it means is when something sounds off, I ask a question and find out.   

There's a couple of different things going on here.

The conversation probably didn't happen as s allard tried to remember it. No big deal, like you said we weren't there. But in the context that he thought he remembered it, it didn't make any sense. So if in fact it did happen that way, flags would have been raised. This is where questions would follow for clarification.

If I read about some regional use of the word hasta and then this same conversation takes place with me as s allard remembered it, I don't walk away thinking, hmm, there's that obscure usage.   I also don't look at it so deep as to then ask, how do we know what is really intended?, or something similar. Context always tells us the meaning, and when something that follows doesn't fit. Point is, I'm not going to walk away confused wondering which meaning was the guy shooting for. Please.

What I do is I ask the guy right there, eh, what was that? I find out from the native exactly what he's trying to say to me and if he actually understood what I was trying to ask him.

Your profile says you speak Spanish. This conversation didn't seem odd to you? You looked at it the way s allard did and seriously accepted the fact that this regional usage just created misunderstanding? Like this kind of confusion could have us asking ourselves, how do we really know what the speaker is trying to say?

I doubt it.
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s_allard
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
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Studies: Polish

 
 Message 53 of 56
15 December 2010 at 5:48am | IP Logged 
hypersport wrote:
Yeah, you're right Andy when you say I won't look it up. Rarely used and obscure usage of the language doesn't interest me. Proving this usage exists with 4 different sources doesn't interest me either. I speak Spanish with a lot of different native speakers and I use a lot of native materials daily. I know how people speak and I know when something sounds off. That doesn't mean that I recognize slangs and ways of speaking from all over, hardly. What it means is when something sounds off, I ask a question and find out.   

There's a couple of different things going on here.

The conversation probably didn't happen as s allard tried to remember it. No big deal, like you said we weren't there. But in the context that he thought he remembered it, it didn't make any sense. So if in fact it did happen that way, flags would have been raised. This is where questions would follow for clarification.

If I read about some regional use of the word hasta and then this same conversation takes place with me as s allard remembered it, I don't walk away thinking, hmm, there's that obscure usage.   I also don't look at it so deep as to then ask, how do we know what is really intended?, or something similar. Context always tells us the meaning, and when something that follows doesn't fit. Point is, I'm not going to walk away confused wondering which meaning was the guy shooting for. Please.

What I do is I ask the guy right there, eh, what was that? I find out from the native exactly what he's trying to say to me and if he actually understood what I was trying to ask him.

Your profile says you speak Spanish. This conversation didn't seem odd to you? You looked at it the way s allard did and seriously accepted the fact that this regional usage just created misunderstanding? Like this kind of confusion could have us asking ourselves, how do we really know what the speaker is trying to say?

I doubt it.

Quite an odd comment, indeed. I find it quite interesting that someone who wasn't there is telling me that a conversation that I had probably didn't happen the way I remembered it. As a matter of fact, I made my post that as soon as I got home because I was quite excited about "noticing" this usage. As I said in my original post, I originally thought that the the speaker had said that the store was open till 10 (hasta las diez). This surprised me because stores in Montreal close at 9 P.M. in this shopping center. So I expressed my surprise and asked for clarification (hasta las diez de la noche). That's when the speaker clarified that he meant "desde las diez de la mañana". This usage of hasta is a regional usage as described in the following wiki article:

"Several syntactic patterns that sound very "non-standard" to the Peninsular ear are routine in Mexican Spanish. First and foremost is the more or less conventionalized ellipsis of the negative particle "no" in clauses containing the preposition "hasta" (until):

    * Será publicado hasta fines de año. (that is, 'It will not be published until the end of the year.')
    * Cierran hasta las nueve. ('They don't close until 9 o'clock.')
    * Hasta que tomé la píldora se me quitó el dolor. ('Until I took the pill, the pain did not go away.')

In each case, the sentence has the sense indicated by the English translation only if the main verb is implicitly understood as being negated."

Now, I recognize that not everybody is interested in learning about different varieties of Spanish. I would not have given this any thought at all unless I had read the article on the subject. Since then, by the way, I've heard this usage of hasta a number of times in Mexican movies and on the radio. So, I'm really glad I noticed it. And that was the whole point of my post. What I would have brushed off as a mistake or my mishearing something is actually a legitimate regional usage that has been described in dictionaries and guides to Latin American Spanish. Obviously, if one is not interested in regional usage or dictionaries, this is totally irrelevant.

Actually, this reminded me of the first time I heard "Buen día" instead of "Buenos días" as a greeting in Mexican Spanish. I actually thought the person was saying "Que tenga un buen día" which seemed an odd way to first greet a person. Again a little research taught me that this greeting, "Buen día", is quite common in Mexico. Now I hear it all the time on Mexican radio. Again, if one has no interest in Mexican Spanish, this is not important.
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Andy E
Triglot
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United Kingdom
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 Message 54 of 56
15 December 2010 at 11:15am | IP Logged 
Quote:
Yeah, you're right Andy when you say I won't look it up. Rarely used and obscure usage of the language doesn't interest me. Proving this usage exists with 4 different sources doesn't interest me either.

I don't mind if it doesn't interest you; what I did mind was the assertion that it didn't exist.

Quote:
What it means is when something sounds off, I ask a question and find out.

Quote:
So if in fact it did happen that way, flags would have been raised. This is where questions would follow for clarification.

Quote:
If I read about some regional use of the word hasta and then this same conversation takes place with me as s allard remembered it, I don't walk away thinking, hmm, there's that obscure usage.

Quote:
Point is, I'm not going to walk away confused wondering which meaning was the guy shooting for.

Quote:
What I do is I ask the guy right there, eh, what was that? I find out from the native exactly what he's trying to say to me and if he actually understood what I was trying to ask him.

Quote:
Context always tells us the meaning, and when something that follows doesn't fit.

It's pretty clear from the very first post, clarification was asked for and received. How, then, is this any different to what you're proposing, other than the fact that you wouldn't have been interested in why there was confusion in the first place?


Quote:
Your profile says you speak Spanish. This conversation didn't seem odd to you?

It would have sounded totally weird to me. What I watch (news) and what I read (newspapers) is Peninsular-based. On my few visits to Mexico, I have never come across this usage. That doesn't mean, however, that I am willing to dismiss it out-of-hand. There's plenty of regional misunderstandings possible in my native language, never mind anything else I'm studying.
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Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5775 days ago

781 posts - 1310 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German

 
 Message 55 of 56
15 December 2010 at 7:47pm | IP Logged 
hypersport wrote:
Yeah, you're right Andy when you say I won't look it up. Rarely used and obscure usage of the language doesn't interest me.


If I had heard of it before then it can't be THAT obscure, I'm hardly Mr Spanish. Besides, (parts of) Mexico, Central America, and Columbia is hardly a small area where you are likely to run into it.


hypersport wrote:
Proving this usage exists with 4 different sources doesn't interest me either. I speak Spanish with a lot of different native speakers and I use a lot of native materials daily. I know how people speak and I know when something sounds off.


I don't doubt your Spanish is better than mine, but do you know more about what does and doesn't make sense than native lexicographers? How about the RAE? I assume that is why Andy E posted the link, why not check it out?


hypersport wrote:
That doesn't mean that I recognize slangs and ways of speaking from all over, hardly. What it means is when something sounds off, I ask a question and find out.   


But S_Allard didn't NEED to do so, he understood what had happened because he had just found out about this, that is the whole point of the thread.



hypersport wrote:
If I read about some regional use of the word hasta and then this same conversation takes place with me as s allard remembered it, I don't walk away thinking, hmm, there's that obscure usage.
   

Wouldn't you? I would.



hypersport wrote:
What I do is I ask the guy right there, eh, what was that? I find out from the native exactly what he's trying to say to me and if he actually understood what I was trying to ask him.


I know from experience that natives love to explain their grammar, they never feel insulted, or threatened, or bored, or that they are simply not there to give you free language lessons. OK, sorry for the sarcasm, but if you have the people skills to pull that off then that's great, I certainly couldn't (I know from experience when I lived in Spain!), and why would S_Allard want to risk it anyway WHEN HE ALREADY KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON!


hypersport wrote:
Your profile says you speak Spanish.


Why do you keep saying this? to this third party observer it sounds like you're implying that he is mistaken in that belief.

hypersport wrote:
This conversation didn't seem odd to you? You looked at it the way s allard did and seriously accepted the fact that this regional usage just created misunderstanding? Like this kind of confusion could have us asking ourselves, how do we really know what the speaker is trying to say?


That's not how conversation works! As a Scot living in Yorkshire I often hear odd grammar patterns that at first made no sense. An example is their use of "while" to mean "'till" (as in "I'm working while 5 tonight"). It took me a few exposures to figure out with any certainty what the heck they meant. At no stage did I ever ask them (for obvious reasons) what on earth they meant, I just used context to guess at the meaning and ran with that guess. For things I knew in advance (like I did for the habit of some speakers of occasionally saying "tha" instead of "you"-") my reaction was exactly that of S_Allard- "aha, there's that thing."

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hypersport
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5873 days ago

216 posts - 307 votes 
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 56 of 56
18 December 2010 at 2:20am | IP Logged 
s allard,

If you asked the guy "what time does the store open tomorrow?" then the responses you got and the clarification for the regionalism make sense.

Maybe that's what you actually asked him...¿a qué horas abren mañana?

In your post you said that you asked him "what time is the store open tomorrow?". I interpreted that as “¿a qué horas están abiertos mañana?“ Which would warrant a response of something like "9 to 5" or "we're open till 10" or something similar. What time is the store open tomorrow isn't the same as what time does the store open. At least not the way I see it.

This is why I believed the conversation probably didn't happen as you recalled it. Either that or I misinterpreted what you wrote.




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