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Assimil Spanish - is this correct?

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josht
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 Message 1 of 13
01 June 2009 at 7:03pm | IP Logged 
I'm a bit confused over a sentence in the Assimil Spanish with Ease course. I think there's an error in it, but I wanted to check here before correcting it.

In lesson 19. there's this sentence:

Spanish original: Le telefoneaba para saber si esta tarde podía venir a ver a mij hijo.
English translation: I was phoning her (for) to know if this evening she would be able to come to see my son.

Shouldn't it be "la telefoneaba...", as the pronoun is referring to a female doctor? I know that the indirect object form of "ella" is "le", but telefonear is used in its transitive sense in this sentence, isn't it? In which case, the pronoun should be in the direct object form, which is "la."

Am I right about this, or am I misunderstanding something?
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Javi
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 Message 2 of 13
01 June 2009 at 11:29pm | IP Logged 
josht wrote:
I'm a bit confused over a sentence in the Assimil Spanish with Ease course. I think there's an error in it, but I wanted to check here before correcting it.

In lesson 19. there's this sentence:

Spanish original: Le telefoneaba para saber si esta tarde podía venir a ver a mij hijo.
English translation: I was phoning her (for) to know if this evening she would be able to come to see my son.

Shouldn't it be "la telefoneaba...", as the pronoun is referring to a female doctor? I know that the indirect object form of "ella" is "le", but telefonear is used in its transitive sense in this sentence, isn't it? In which case, the pronoun should be in the direct object form, which is "la."

Am I right about this, or am I misunderstanding something?


It is alright as intransitive, but no one says telefonear nowadays, at least here in Spain, so it shouldn't be in the course. Seriously, I haven't said that word in my entire live. You could say 'llamar (a alguien) (por teléfono)' and 'hacer una llamada'.

Cheers.
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patuco
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 Message 3 of 13
02 June 2009 at 5:01pm | IP Logged 
Using "le" is fine since it's formal. Perhaps adding "usted" might help you to see it better, i.e.
"Le telefoneaba a usted para saber si esta tarde podía venir a ver a mi hijo."

Javi's right, though, "telefonear" does sound odd and I've only heard it said as a joke.

Edited by patuco on 02 June 2009 at 5:03pm

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Javi
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 Message 4 of 13
02 June 2009 at 6:03pm | IP Logged 
There is an entry in the DPD for it:

Quote:
Cuando significa ‘llamar a alguien por teléfono’, en el uso culto mayoritario funciona como intransitivo, de modo que la persona a la que se llama se expresa mediante un complemento indirecto: «Esa noche le telefoneó a Perla nada más que para escucharla hablar» (Cortázar Glenda [Arg. 1980]). No obstante, en el habla culta se documenta también su uso como transitivo: «Gustavo la telefoneaba casi todos los días» (Donoso Elefantes [Chile 1995]).

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Ajijic10
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 Message 5 of 13
03 June 2009 at 7:02pm | IP Logged 
Here where I live in Mexico you almost always hear the Direct Object pronoun used when "calling someone". "La llamé ayer." "I called her yesterday." "Lo llamé ayer" "I called him yesterday." "Los llamé ayer" "I called them yesterday"
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TheBiscuit
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 Message 6 of 13
04 June 2009 at 5:58pm | IP Logged 
Where I live you hear llamar sometimes but mostly you hear hablar. Le hablo ahorita - I'll call him/her/usted in a minute. I've never heard telefonear. People say echame un telefonazo or echame un grito sometimes.

Is that Assimil 1959?

josht wrote:
Shouldn't it be "la telefoneaba...", as the pronoun is referring to a female doctor? I know that the indirect object form of "ella" is "le", but telefonear is used in its transitive sense in this sentence, isn't it? In which case, the pronoun should be in the direct object form, which is "la."

Am I right about this, or am I misunderstanding something?

Remember le can mean to him/to her and to usted.
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readical
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 Message 7 of 13
05 June 2009 at 9:41am | IP Logged 
"Telefonear" is also used in the German edition which was printed in 2004.

It seems to be quite outdated: the recordings and the text still contain the currency of pesetas (though with an annotation in the text that Spain now has the Euro) and the map of Spain lists an old structure of the Spanish provinces (Castilla la Vieja for example).
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TheBiscuit
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 Message 8 of 13
09 June 2009 at 7:25pm | IP Logged 
readical wrote:
"Telefonear" is also used in the German edition which was printed in 2004.

Because of the cognate telefonieren? Do people use that in German or is anrufen more common?


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