endation Triglot Newbie United States mattgrabermusic.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6300 days ago 28 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English*, Modern Hebrew, Spanish Studies: French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin
| Message 1 of 9 08 February 2012 at 7:28pm | IP Logged |
Let's say that you're at a restaurant and the person behind the counter says "Para aqui?," asking if you want to stay and eat the food there. You could, of course, just say "Si, para aqui," but let's say that you wanted to say the English equivalent of "Yes, I'm staying here." Does it sound more natural to a native speaker to say "Si, me quedo aqui" or "Si, me estoy quedando aqui?"
I have a feeling that it's "me quedo," but I'm curious because this would be the opposite of English (you wouldn't say, "Yes, I stay here.").
Gracias!
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kerateo Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5647 days ago 112 posts - 180 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, French Studies: Italian
| Message 2 of 9 08 February 2012 at 9:31pm | IP Logged |
I guess "Para aqui" is part of the common expression "para aqui o para llevar?". You can not say "Si, me estoy quedando aqui" (unless it´s the hotel restaurant and the guy is asking you if you are a guest). Anyway I think any response besides "para aqui" would be weird.
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mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese
| Message 3 of 9 09 February 2012 at 12:53am | IP Logged |
Without any more context, there's definitely something weird about that question 'para aquí?' -- I'm not clear if you're asking 'are you eating it here?' (standard Spanish, 'para' = for,) or 'are you staying here (to eat it)?' (Latin American idiomatic Spanish, 'para' = 3rd person singular of 'parar' = 'quedarse').
One way or another, the Spanish equivalent of 'I'm staying here' would be 'me quedo aquí', or even better 'me voy a quedar aquí' or 'me quedaré aquí', and never 'me estoy quedando aquí' -- this would imply you've already been staying there for a few days and you're staying a bit more.
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 4 of 9 09 February 2012 at 10:11am | IP Logged |
endation wrote:
(...)let's say that you wanted to say the English equivalent of "Yes, I'm staying here." Does it sound more natural to a native speaker to say "Si, me quedo aqui" or "Si, me estoy quedando aqui?"
I have a feeling that it's "me quedo," but I'm curious because this would be the opposite of English (you wouldn't say, "Yes, I stay here."). |
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I'm told that (English) learners of Spanish overuse the -ing-tense. Another discussion about it here:
Using the gerund in Spanish
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Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4750 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish
| Message 5 of 9 09 February 2012 at 1:32pm | IP Logged |
Native speakers of English overuse even the English -ing tense:
I'm feeling fine.
I'm loving it.
The list of verbs that cannot be used with continuous tenses is shrinking dramatically.
Edited by Camundonguinho on 09 February 2012 at 1:33pm
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endation Triglot Newbie United States mattgrabermusic.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6300 days ago 28 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English*, Modern Hebrew, Spanish Studies: French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin
| Message 6 of 9 09 February 2012 at 3:52pm | IP Logged |
Thanks for the link. It's interesting to see how different languages use this present progressive (continuous) tense differently. In English it always gets used to describe something that you're doing right now (e.g. you can't say I eat now to mean I'm eating now), in Spanish it's used but not as often, and then there are languages where the tense doesn't exist at all (Hebrew, for example. I think it's the same in Russian and Arabic, among others, but I could be wrong.)
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mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese
| Message 7 of 9 09 February 2012 at 9:38pm | IP Logged |
endation wrote:
It's interesting to see how different languages use this present progressive (continuous) tense differently. In English it always gets used to describe something that you're doing right now (e.g. you can't say I eat now to mean I'm eating now), in Spanish it's used but not as often |
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Actually I'd say it's a bit different. It's in Spanish where the gerund always refers to ongoing (continuous, unfinished) actions. In English, be + ing can describe two kinds of actions:
1) A continuous, ongoing action
2) An action that will take place in a (subjectively) near future
f.ex. "I'm doing X (right now)" vs "I'm doing it in a minute" (so it's not always 1).
In Spanish 1 is expressed through the equivalent structure just like in English, but 2 is usually expressed with the present simple (f.ex. "voy en un minuto") and not with a continuous tense.
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Superking Diglot Groupie United States polyglutwastaken.blo Joined 6644 days ago 87 posts - 194 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin
| Message 8 of 9 10 February 2012 at 3:18am | IP Logged |
Camundonguinho wrote:
Native speakers of English overuse even the English -ing tense:
I'm feeling fine.
I'm loving it.
The list of verbs that cannot be used with continuous tenses is shrinking dramatically. |
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What do you mean, "overuse"? As a native speaker, your two examples sound perfectly fine.
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