One who has both talent and knowledge, and also gets to produce new ideas is known in Spanish as ‘sabio’. Sometimes the word is mistakenly used as ‘erudito’ [erudite], but this last word means knowing many things about many topics, not necessarily related with one another.
Also, if you get to know about somebody who knows a great deal about one subject, but doesn´t produce that many new ideas, you can call him/her ‘docto’ [taught]
Example:
No solo era erudita sino sabia también
Translation:
Not only did she was an erudite, but a wise woman as well
‘Dolencia’ comes from Spanish ‘dolor’ [pain] and it is used frequently instead of ‘enfermedad’ [sickness]. In case it comes across, you should find out whether or not a pain is involved.
Should pain be out of the picture, you must take it as ‘ sickness’, not as a suffering pain.
‘Lengua’ is frequently translated as “tongue”, “language” or “idiom”, but it should be used just for the first two, as “language” is related to ‘Lenguaje’, and the Spanish signification is associated with an individual practice: each person has his or her own language.
A nation has a ‘lengua’ and each one of its citizens, has a version of her own: her ‘lenguaje’. In English that is not the case. Both tongue and language refer to the same set of symbols.
When it comes the time to apologize in Spanish don’t use ‘me disculpo’ [I apologize myself] or ‘Doy una disculpa’ [I give an apology], because apologies are, like in English, offered… and they could even be rejected.
‘Ofrezco una disculpa’ [I offer an apology] is the right way to do apologize in Spanish, although you might find some countries in America where the wrong-way form ‘pido una disculpa’ is used the most.
Words with no Spanish counterpart are rare, but “Software” is one of them. ´Programa´ [program] is not the right translation, as software means also the data of those programs. To makes things harder, there is also software in other areas different from computer science, as in the musical field.
It is an intangible and it relates only to the information: the ordered elements of code or musical notes existing in a hard disk or CD. That is the reason you will find the word in Spanish untranslated. Don’t try to find a translation. And then… there is yet one neighbor: “Hardware”.
This preposition is a tricky one, even for locals, because its use is ‘multimodal’ [multiple modes] One of the most important ones is to indicate who is receiving from who, i.e. in ‘el perro persigue al gato’ [the dog is after the cat] if you take it away you’ll get: ‘el perro persigue el gato’, and you can’t tell who is after who.
Sometimes you have to “take the ‘a’ away”, as in: ‘Antonio busca un sastre’ [Anthony is looking for a tailor] because if you add the ‘a’, as in ‘Antonio busca a un sastre’, then it means he is looking for a certain tailor he knows. In these instances ‘a’ gives personification to whatever follows.
‘Hacia un lugar inferior’ [toward a place below] is what ‘Abajo’ means -when paired with movement verbs, as in: ‘nadó aguas abajo’ [swam downstream]. If the associated verb doesn’t mean movement, then it has a sense of a place below: “Está allá abajo’ [he is below]
Without the ever important “movement” prefix ‘a’, ‘bajo’ can function as the “down” adverb: ‘a un volumen bajo’ [at a lower volume]. When it appears after a noun, it means in the lowest part: ‘río abajo’ [down river]
The ‘Donde’ [where] and ‘adonde’ [to where] difference is on movement: the second one is used when the action starts at someplace and ends somewhere else, as in ‘El almacén donde compramos tu traje’ [The store where we bought your suit]
When using these words in the interrogative form, don´t forget an ‘acento’ is in order: ‘¿en dónde vives?’ [where do you live?] ‘¿adónde fuiste?’ [where did you go?]
Don’t get confused by ‘ahí’ and ‘allí’, just because they don´t have direct equivalents in English. They form a group with the word ‘aquí’ [here], that is: ‘aquí, ahí, allí’. They refer to something either close to the speaker, closer to the listener or far from both.
Although English doesn´t have the third one, English speakers manage by adding “over” when talking about something far from both speaker and listener, as in “over there”, the ‘ahí’ counterpart.
Even if you think ‘acentos’ [diacritical stress marks] can be spared, you should keep an eye on using at least the most frequent ones, as Spanish speakers are used to exploit this “visual resource” to make reading faster. This is especially true when ‘homónimos’ [homonimous] are present.
‘Homónimos’ are words that sound the same, but have different meanings. The example below has two pairs: ‘si’-'sí’ [if-yes] and ‘tú’-'tu’ [you-your]
Spanish Noun: Gente Pronunciation: Gayn-tay Translation: People Function: Noun Using ‘gente’ (a collective) when talking abou a single person might be wrong, but people in Spain often do, i.e. ‘Ví una gente en el corredor’ [I saw somebody on the hall]. Latin-Americans try not to do it, as the word is defined as a group of persons. You can use ‘gente’ for both “people” and “a person”, but try not to do it in Latin-America, where you should try to use ‘una persona’ [a person] or ‘alguien’ [somebody] instead. Example: – ¿Quién lo dice? – La gente Translation: – Who says? – People
You can use ‘en’ as a wild card when you are in a hurry or just don’t remember the exact preposition to use when something is «on», «in» or «at» something.
Foreigners can take advantage of ‘en’ being acceptable as a substitute for ‘encima’ [on], ‘dentro’ [in] or even the adverb ‘ubicado’ [at]. English is clearly mucho stricter when it comes to these prepositions.
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