It's very interesting how the human brain learns and handles language. One of the more interesting people I've been privileged to meet was a 15-year old Chinese girl living in Brooklyn (NY). She struggled terribly with writing a paper for school (didn't seem to even have the basic concept of having an introduction, middle, and conclusion). Chinese (I think Cantonese) was her native language and she spoke English fluently and could read English all right. What was the problem? She had not learned to write in Chinese and thus could not "transfer" the skill to English, and as a language learner in the English-speaking school system she fell way behind in written language.

When I was teaching math, I thought I could ask some of my bilingual Hispanic students how to say certain things (x squared, for example). It turned out that they really weren't any better at expressing mathematical concepts in Spanish than I was. Why? Although their mother tongue was Spanish, they had come up through the American school system and "thought" math in English!

Well, all of us have things we wish were different in our background, but that doesn't mean we should give up. Thanks for the encouraging post. ¡Espero que le pasen bien los estudios!

Espero que te vayan bien los estudios

Gracias por la corrección. Me gusta aprender hablar mejor. Pues, escribir mejor. Ja ja. De veras me pensaba, ¿debo usar "ir" o usar "pasar"? Pero es "Pasa un buen fin de semana", ¿verdad?

¿Porqué usas te (tú form) y no le (usted form)? ¡Nunca he conocido a ese escritor en mi vida! Y siempre he oído que si no sepa cual forma que usar, use usted, a lo menos hasta que la otra persona dice "tu".

This is a very subjective question, for me is more friendly to use "tú". It gives a sensation of warmth and proximity. Although you don't know this person I suppose you want to be kind with me. "Usted" transmit coldness and detachment.
In Spain nowadays we tend to use more "tú" with young people and "usted" with people of a certain age.
When someone tell me "usted" I get offended because is like they are telling you old

I wanted to say kind with him (not with me)

¡Que interesante! Mi bebé me despertó hace un rato. (Is that right for "My baby woke me up a while ago"') Debo dormirme otra vez. Aquí son las cinco de la mañana.

¡Hasta luego! Y intrataré te tratarte de "tu"!

All is excellent but the last line is: "intentaré tratarte de tú".
Happy dreams

Difster
My sentiments exactly, very well expressed.
I think you forget all those grammar labels that you learned in school. I've had to go to an English grammar site to refresh my memory. That is why it's so hard to explain things to a Spanish person learning English & conversely. The teachers do a better job since they stay familiar with the rules.

It's frustrating to try to put a sentence together, right sequence, conjugation, tense & place all those little pronouns all around.

Just try to remember how far you have advanced from when you started, that should make you feel better.

Difster,
I think we can all relate to what you're going through. Learning a foreign language forces us to analyze our native language in ways we would never have done otherwise. We absorb our native language, rather than learn it, by and large, so we don't give much thought to why we say certain things the way we do. I believe that learning a foreign language is one of the best ways to improve one's native language. I know that I never truly understood the subjunctive in English until I learned Spanish.

I used to teach English as a second language, and my students would often ask me questions that brought me up short. And I had scored in the 99 percentile for English on my SAT, so I thought my English skills were really superb (I've since learned some humility). But their questions always made me learn something, or at least think about it. For example, one student asked me this: "You say yesterday was Tuesday, and today is Wednesday, so why do you say tomorrow is Thursday, instead of tomorrow will be Thursday'"

Good question, eh?

Así son los idiomas.

Having to reevaluate English in the process of learning Spanish has been fascinating for me. I can see why it's a difficult language for others to learn.

"You say yesterday was Tuesday, and today is Wednesday, so why do you say tomorrow is Thursday, instead of tomorrow will be Thursday'"

I think I have an answer for that. "Tomorrow" is a state of existence that exists in the present so we use the present tense. Think about this. Tomorrow is Thursday and I will go shopping. Next month is my birthday and I will celebrate at the beach. A fixed point of time in the future is referred to in the present because it's relative to "now" which is always "is."

The reason that "yesterday was..." is because yesterday no longer exists and it's not a point that will be reached.

I realize that my explanation is a bit of a stretch but it makes sense.

I've also been thinking lately about idioms and how difficult it must be for someone learning English to figure them out. For example. We are told to "buckle down" or "buckle up" however the act of buckling is neither up or down and it is certainly not intuitive that "buckle down" means focus on your priorities. That's fodder for another post though.

I realize that my explanation is a bit of a stretch but it makes sense.

I don't think it makes sense because the same logic applied to tomorrow would have to be applied to yesterday. That is, if you consider tomorrow to be a state of existence that exists in the present, you would have to consider yesterday to be a state of existence that exists in the present, as well. The only real answer to my student's question is one we have all heard many times from our own teachers: "We just say it that way."

As to verb+preposition idioms, I agree that they are certainly the most difficult aspect of learning English as a second language, because they often make no sense, or at least don't make sense if you don't know the etymology. For example, to say someone looks run down in the sense of looking tired makes no sense unless you know that "run down" comes from the expression used about clocks, which would run until their springs had lost tension. The "down" came from the fact that the weights pulled down on a chain connected to the spring.

Someone once said that English is a ridiculous language because first you chop down a tree, and then you chop it up. And a house that burns down is the same as a house that burns up.

UP, which leads me to this

The meaning of "UP"

UP
Lovers of the English language might enjoy this.....

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP a and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this UP is confusing:

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP !

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP! to about thirty definitions .

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth.

When it doesn't! rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so.............

Time to shut UP.....!

Oh...one more thing:
What is the first thing you do in the morning &the last thing you do at night?

U P

Thanks for making me crack UP, Motley!

That was awesome! Keep UP the good work!

Are you winding DOWN yet? All these UPs have me all tangled UP!