Princess Nishea wrote:Jinchuuriki wrote:Princess Nishea wrote:Gracias so much for the critique, and the one you want me to translate is supposed to say
"Hello, I just want to tell everyone to have a good day.
I recently got a rare winged orange and black dog from the pound so my day has been good."
Also, it has indeed been a bit weird to pretty much have to put "the" before so many words, which is probably why I forgot LOL.
Well, this is long, so... you said "Hola, yo sólo quiero a cuento todos a tengas un buen dia.".
From your own translation, it should have been "Hola, sólo quiero deciros/desearos a todos un buen dia." Deciros/desearos... because you dont tell people to have a good day, you wish them a good day, right? Same in spanish. "Deciros" is if you mean to tell, "desearos" if you mean to wish.
And "cuento" you went for the present form of tell, I tell, in spanish. The problem is, "quiero a cuento" kinda means "want a story" and that falls pretty far from the original "want to tell". Cuento either means a story, or as a verb, to count (also kinda like tell, but not exactly, hard to explain xD)
You think having to use so many "the" is a problem? I dont care, I dont care, I dont care! I already speak spanish
Nah, now seriously, when you start touching the second meanings, the "the" tsunami will be nothing but a dream xD
Thanks again for the critique/info!
You have been very helpful! (^~^)
What I've taken away is that maybe I need to take into account the meaning of words and phrases a bit more then their literal translations, and I want to know what you mean by second meanings but I'm too scared to ask.
Lastly, all in all using "the" so much is so strange to me because say I want to eat an apple and wanted someone to pass it to me.
In english I would just say "can you give me a apple", but in spanish I would have to say "puedes te das un la manzana", which when translated back to english (and if I'm correct) means "can you give me a the apple."
Yup I would recomend wordreference.com, since it helps me a lot xD
By second meanings I mean that we can say for example "Te voy a dar una torta". Well, in spanish, from spain, a "torta" is some kind of cookie, just a bit different, but I think it classifies as cookie. So my phrase means "Im going to give you a cookie".
But at the same time, it has a second meaning. It also means "Im going to slap you" since we also call a slap a "torta". So you can guess one is good, the other not as good.
Plus, if you move from spain to latin america, you will find that a "torta" is a cake, althought Im not sure if its also a slap there xD
The problem here is if you use google translate, and webs like those. They dont really take the sentence into account to find the best meaning for each word, so it ends not being spanish, and not being english either. The best way to do it, and the best way to learn, is to translate word by word with a dictionary instead od using google. The one I said before, wordreference, you can put the word you want there, and it will tell you several words with that meaning, depending on what you want to say.
From that same example you used, in english you said "can you give me an apple?". With that much info, I can guess there are more than one, or else you would have said, "can you pass me the apple?".
Starting from there, "an apple" as in one apple, would be "una manzana" (un + female).
So you wouldnt be using "the" here. It would end as "puedes darme una manzana?" (dar + first person, darme. Second person would be darte, third persob would be darle... its weird xD)
So, using "The". Can you pass me the apple? Can you give me the apple?
Así que, usando "La". Puedes pasarme la manzana? Puedes darme la manzana?
If you arent lost yet in all the text I wrote, in those last two sentences you can see that it makes a bit of sense, is almost the same xD