la oídos

Question

Please tell me this is a typo, and it should be los oídos . . . ''?

Sería mejor que se pongan los dedos en la oídos.

And also: the word I knew for ears was orejas. The dictionary indicates that orejas are external and oídos are the internal part. Is this used consistently'

Answer 1

:

I have to say that other people I've met who are learning English (I'm referring to some Chinese and Russian friends, not to anyone on this forum) can't help asking "why." Why do you say "the" in this sentence? (Russians) Why do you say "he", not "it"? (Chinese)

"Why do you say 'the' in this sentence", or "Why do you use subjunctive in that sentence" are two perfectly normal questions, but "Why don't you use 'la' instead of 'the' in that English sentence, like Spanish does'" is a bit pointless, since the only answer is "Because they are different languages. Period.". Why is it surprising that a language is different from others'

Answer 2

I think that most of the people who ask "Why do you say...'" (or, even more, those that ask "Why don't you say ...'" mean, ultimately, "Why don't you do it the way we do in my language? When phrased that way, the answer is, almost always, "Because we don't!" (which is only another way of saying that different languages are different. Most of the discussions in this forum that attempt to offer explanations (especially of syntactic constructs) do so by trying to point out a relationship to some other language. Obviously, in the case of Spanish, one can often offer some precedent in Latin, but, really that's an "easy" answer. Often, some other Romance language does not handle things in the same way. So you're back to "Why in this language and not in that language'" The usual span for linguistic changes is centuries. It's not as though somebody decided as some point "Let's say ... this way" (which might offer the possibility of asking that person, "Why'").

One of the hurdles that one faces, when studying a foreign language, is to learn to accept "That's the way it is." as an answer. It may be easier to remember if it relates to some already known construct but , ultimately, it's always "That's the way it is!" What seems to one person a reasonable/helpful parallel is unlikely to be helpful to someone whose language is from a different family.

Even when one can say "because that's the way it was done in Latin (for example)", one could ask why other Romance languages didn't do likewise or why is this done the way it was in Latin and not that (some other feature). At some level, it always comes back to "because that's the way it is".

Answer 3

Natasha said:

Wow, this is interesting, folks. What was the original question'? ha haI'm more at Mark's level, probably because I can only speak two languages (English and Spanish). I can't help wondering, at times, "why" things in Spanish are said certain ways. The most recent example came from the sample sentence giving by Lazarus:Vamos a sacar(te) la camiseta y a ponerte el pijama.I wondered "why" it was necessary to repeat the a. No, I'm not trying to re-start the controversy here -- just trying to point out that those of you with a strong linguistical knowledge are carrying on a discussion at a level that many of us can't match. When a lot of us are asking "why," we're just struggling to adapt to the terms of a language that's not familiar to us.

Hey Natasha,
What does 'a ponerte' mean? Thanks

Answer 4

Mark Baker said:

:

Hey Natasha, What does 'a ponerte' mean? Thanks

See this discussion, where Lazarus was correcting a translation I made.

[url=http://my.spanishdict.com/forum/topic/show'id=1710195%3ATopic%3A453434&page=2&commentId=1710195%3AComment%3A462827&x=1#1710195Comment462827]http://my.spanishdict.com/forum/topic/show'id=1710195%3ATopic%3A453...[/url]

Answer 5

Rob said:

:

No entiendo porque todas discuter eso es mejor que lo discutas a espanol no? es mucho mas interesante y podemos aprender todavia.

Are you sure? Look at this one. I never did get all of what Lazarus said translated.

[url=http://my.spanishdict.com/forum/topic/show'id=1710195%3ATopic%3A223198&x=1&page=1]http://my.spanishdict.com/forum/topic/show'id=1710195%3ATopic%3A223198&x=1&page=1[/url]

Answer 6

.

Answer 7

As a reply to Mark Baker, the masculine article is used in front of feminine words that start with "a". "La agua" would sound like "lagua". But since agua is a feminine noun, naturally in the plural one says "las aguas".

Answer 8

In regards to "oido" and "oreja", it is of course correct what people have said. "Oreja" is the part that sticks out from the head and "oido" is the actual organ of hearing inside the head. However, my Mexican friend says that they do not use the word "oido" in Mexico. I guess in the common speech of Mexico they would say "se oye con las orejas".