me dueles ?
Gurus
As much as I love this song its giving me a headache grammatically speaking.
First I simply assumed it means "You hurt me" and it seemed to make perfect sense. Then my Spanish buddy throws me off again by saying "No it's Me Duele !" I told him the song was called "Me Dueles" but he insists that's not correct.
According to him the verb "doler" is used to say "I'm hurting" or "I'm hurt" or "My arm hurts" and so forth. Me duele el brazo.
I asked him how to say "You hurt me" and he said "Me lastimas" for example.
What bugs me tremendously is that a band from Spain such as La Quinta would sing something totally wrong ? I mean they must know right ? What does "Me dueles" sound like to a native speaker ?
Assuming it really is wrong then how would I know ? I can't find anything in the dictionary that shows me that the word "doler" cannot be used to hurt someone else. The only hint I guess I have is that it has no examples in there saying "You hurt me" but then again a dictionary cannot mention every single way a word is used. I probably have to learn how to read a dictionary better.
Any feedback is appreciated !
Thanks
71 Answers
Me duele, without any other words (since no subject was specified) means: he/she/it is giving pain to me.
Quentin said:
Te duelo yo. (I am hurting you)
Both sentences are wrong. Doler means to hurt, not to inflict pain onto a direct object, a receiver of this pain.
Yo te duelo, is not possible. It does not translate to : I am hurting you, as doler is intranstive.
In your song, it is used in a very figurative way, grammatically speaking , it is incorrect.
Remember:
Esto me duele mucho. I am hurt by this. But this means, that I feel pain, not that something has inflicted pain on me
To inflict pain, to hurt: dañar or more common: hacer daño.
Hacer daño and doler are sometimes interchangable, especially wrongly used, which we often do
Me duelen los zapatos. (you hear this all the time) The shoes hurt my feet, that is , my feet hurt, jeje
this should of course read: me hacen daño los zapatos.
It will be hard to explain it in English… I will try. She loves him so much, but he already gone. That feeling upsets her because he used to be everything in her life, now he is a bad feeling. Thinking about him hurts. So, he is a painful feeling and a painful memory... Also, she feels that without him, life is not important anymore.
The fact that the verb is intransitive (in Spanish) doesn't mean that it can't translate into a transitive use.
Hi quentin, no , you are right , it does translate to a transtitive sentence, but we are not talking about transitive in English but in Spanish.
In a nutshell:
Hurt (to feel pain!!) as "doler" is intransitive, that is, has no direct object the pain is infringed upon. so a sentence like:
You are hurting me. Is impossible with the verb doler.
However, to hurt has another translation: dañar or hacer daño (preferred in Spain)
You are hurting me: tu me dañas/tú me haces daño
In this case the verb IS transitive, so the sentence is perfect.
Tú me dueles is technically impossible.
Tú---subject
me---direct object
dueles-----to feel pain
so this would mean:
You feel pain me/upon me. 
I guess everybody can see this makes no sense.
It is a nonliteral/figurative meaning.
Yeah the old gustar...I've been battling with those types. I do understand
me gusta el cafe or me falta el dinero or me duele el brazo.
What I have not figured out yet why these types of verbs cannot be used with anything other than 3rd person sing or 3rd person plural. Actually for me as a German native "Me falta dinero" is not strange at all since we can say the exact same thing "Mir fehlt Geld" - "I'm lacking money". However, we can also say "Du fehlst Mir" meaning "You're lacking to me" or rather "I miss you". It seems I cannot do that in Spanish can I ? "Me faltas" ? I assume that would be the same as "Me dueles" which, as I'm finding out now, is after all acceptable. So then why not "Me faltas" - "I miss you" ? Or "Me gustas" - "I like you (romantically f.e.)" ?
Guess my point is why can a 3rd person object or objects be missing to me or be hurting me or be pleasing to me but not a 2nd person like "tu" ?
Me duele la cabeza. My head hurts.
I just realized that here nobody mentions why my head is hurting or what caused it. It appears the world "doler" is not in charge of explaining a cause of pain but rather the fact of having pain alone. I think you are saying that they are trying to explain "You are causing me pain" or "your presents, or thoughts about cause me pain"
Doler works like gustar; that is to say, it works backwards compared to how the English-wired brain expects a verb to work. It can have various meanings, but, when being used to mean "to hurt," I would find it helpful to think of it as meaning "to give / cause pain."
La cabeza is the subject. Me is the indirect object. Duele is third person singular of doler. The head is giving pain to me. Or, in better English, my head hurts.
Me duele, without any other words (since no subject was specified) means: he/she/it is giving pain to me. In better English, we would say: he/she/it hurts me. We would need more context to know whether the unspecified subject is he, she, or it.
Note, that in the English sentence it hurts me, me is the direct object. However, in the Spanish sentence me duele, me is the indirect object. It's almost like the direct object (that is, pain) is built into the verb (so far as I can understand it).
Can anybody then give me a transitive example using doler ? There must be one since I refuse to believe that a modern dictionary is 100% wrong.
All the reflexive uses "dolerse" exhibit a transitive use of "doler" ....
But with all due respect, sometimes, especially online dictionaries are generated by poor code...code that improperly interprets the source..and then the entries are wrong.
For example, right here at Span¡shD!ct.com, you will find this strange entry from the Valazquez (a very respected) dictionary for "marquesa" suggesting that it can be a verb:
marquesa
marquesa [mar-kay'-sah] noun
- Marchioness, the lady of a marquis. (f)
- (f)
verb
- MARQUESINA
.
What I have not figured out yet why these types of verbs cannot be used with anything other than 3rd person sing or 3rd person plural.
The can be used with other verb persons. I recall that Heidita used to have a flashcard set that had some interesting variations using gusto (the verb, not the noun) instead of gusta.
A ella le gustamos nosotros. (we are pleasing to her).
She likes us.
A ti te gusto yo. (I am pleasing to you)
You like me.
Doler works like gustar; that is to say,...
That is to say that it is intransitive. You hurt me would be the English transitive equivalent.
Te duelo yo. (I am hurting you)
You hurt me.
I agree, though, that the reflexive meaning of dolerse overshadows this intransitive use and using a different verb would be preferable.
So they're actually singing something totally wrong ? How wrong is it ? Can it be considered "creative freedom" ? What would the English equivalent sound like ?
Your buddy is right. And "Me lastimas" could also be spoken as "Me haces doler."
It seems to me that I have heard ''me dueles'' in some other song as well. At least ''me gustas'' for sure exists in Manu Chao song ''Me gustas tu'', although it gave me trouble to understand if that means ''I like you'' or ''you like me'' 
In this particular lyrical context the girl says ''me dueles'', because the thoughts, vision, memory of this guy has become as a separate inner part of her, ''como los ojos'', so this particular part is causing pain to her. As she's trying to talk directly to this special part of her, it turns out to sound a bit odd, but possible. It's like saying ''it's you who's in pain, but as you are a part of me, it also hurts me''.
Thank you for trying. I know it must be hard. So "You hurt me" isn't really a good translation. I'm trying to narrow it down and I'm still not sure about the following :
Me duele la cabeza. My head hurts.
I just realized that here nobody mentions why my head is hurting or what caused it. It appears the world "doler" is not in charge of explaining a cause of pain but rather the fact of having pain alone. I think you are saying that they are trying to explain "You are causing me pain" or "your presents, or thoughts about cause me pain"
I'm ok with that but there is the issue of all native speakers I talked to saying "I'd never use doler like that !" Now I'm wondering why they have to "bend" a word like doler into saying what it wasn't really made to say.
Does this mean there is no other, more proper way to express this. Maybe "Me haces sentir dolor" ? I guess that just doesnt' sound as good in a song right ? Would the be the closest way to express that without using doler ?
Could you expand a bit on that ? What exactly are they trying to express that cannot be expressed any other way. Is it like "What you do hurts me ?" Also, is it still considered grammatically wrong ? Does it have to do with physical pain vs. mental pain ?
Stucky101 asked:
Does anybody have a good English equivalent that would help me?
How about this: It pains me to think of you.
To Pain is a verb, but it is one of those verbs in English that doesn't conjugate to any subject.
I pain you. (wrong)
He pained her. (nope)
You pain me. (x-nay)
It pains him... (correct, if the sentence continues with an explanation.)
So although this may not be a literal translation of "me dueles", perhaps it is a comparison in English to a sufficiently similar phrase using an odd verb.
By the way, grammatically correct does not indicate something makes sense: the dog wags his tail is grammatically correct and makes sense. Frank wags the refrigerator is grammatically correct but makes no sense. - webdunce J
One last comment as this is clear now. Web, you said this and generally speaking you are perfeclty right, this often happens.
However, not with this verb. This is an intransitive verb, hence it has no direct object and using a direct object with it, is grammatically incorrect.
Stucky, I did get just a tad impatient
, jeje, but I guess that is normal, however I did not stop answering
And I always say: there is no such thing as a stupid question. It is much more stupid, not to ask
