Is this lyric positive or negative - I can't tell
Grammar gurus
I like to take apart lyrics to try and see what the author is trying to express and I thought a song called "Algo más" might be easy since it appears to be a simple lovesong saying "We are something more". Boy was I wrong !
There are several problems I need help with. Lets go line by line. I replace lines I cannot translate with ?????????????????.
quote- A veces pienso que te miento cuando te digo que te quiero porque esto ya no es querer -quote
Sometimes it feels like a lie when I tell you that I love you because this isn't love anymore
Ok right there I have to change my mind and assume this relationship is not good anymore. But grammatically I understand the stuff. Let's move on
quote- A veces creo que he muerto cuando no estás y yo despierto porque sé que esto ya no es querer -quote Sometimes I think I've died ?????????????????????? Grammar problem number 1.- "cuando no estás y yo despierto" First of all, is "estás" short for "estás aquí" or "estás despertando" or even "estás despertado" ? Second, "yo despierto" seems to say "I wake (somebody) up". "I wake up" would have to be "me despierto" so who is she waking up ? If he is sleeping she might wake him up but if he is not here at all then what ?
because I know that this isn't love anymore.
So this verse isn't clear to me. Let's move on.
quote- Es algo más, algo que me llena algo que no mata ni envenena es algo más, algo más que amar -quote
It's something more, something that fulfills me something that neither kills nor poisons it's something more, something more than love/loving.
Ok so it does fulfill her needs after all ? It doesn't kill or poison ? Not sure what that says about the relationship. Its something more than loving. Wow so this is even better than love ? Sounds very positive now. I'm confused. Let's move on.
Chorus: quote- Es algo más que la distancia que el dolor y la nostalgia sabemos que eso no nos va a separar -quote
It's something more than distance than pain and nostalgia we know that this is never gonna separate us
What ? There is distance and pain in this relationship and that stuff is making it work so well that they aren't ever gonna drift apart ? Now the next verse is the ultimate bomb !
quote- Es darte un beso cada noche que tus manos me enamoren y que lo nuestro crezca cada día más -quote
It's kissing you every night ????????????????????? ????????????????????? Problem : Where was the subjunctive (enamoren and crezca) triggered ? I cannot see it. Is she using it here to express a desire for things to happen rather than describing actuality ? Maybe the trigger is implied similarily to "Que tengas un buen día" which is technically "Deseo/quiero que tengas un buen día". Is she missing his loving hands ? Is this thing they have growing every day or is it not and she wishes it was ? Need much help here cause at this point I have no idea how she feels about this guy. This feeling is being furthered by the next verse
quote- A veces creo que he vivido más de mil años contigo porque sé que esto ya no es querer -quote
Sometimes I think I have lived more than a 1000 years with you because I know that this isn't love anymore.
This could be good or bad. She might feel so comfi with him that it feels like they have lived together forever or she feels like they are in a rut. No idea. She also keeps ending every verse with this rather negative statement. It gets worse
quote- A veces pienso que es mentira por cómo entraste en mi vida porque sé que esto ya no es querer -quote
Sometimes I think it was a lie the way you came into my life because I know that this isn't love anymore.
Not a very happy song at this point. But then there is the bridge
quote- Y yo sé que no es querer porque en tus ojos yo me puedo perder contigo olvido lo que es temer acaso no sabes que tú eres para mí la noche, el día en mi vivir la sangre en mis venas lo doy todo por ti contigo el mundo no tiene final y el tiempo no se nos va a acabar -quote
And I know that it isn't love because I loose myself in your eyes with you I loose all my fears maybe you don't know what you are to me ???????? Problem : "en mi vivir" ? I can only assume it means "Night and day of my life" ? Meaning "24/7, all the time , day and night" ?
the blood in my veins I give everything for you with you the world is endless and time will never run out for us
Ok so this doesn't sound bad at all now.
Maybe I'm misreading "querer and te quiero" ? Is she saying they used to be good friends but now it feels like more ? Then why all the negative stuff ?
I'd love for you guys to help me get a decent English translation of the stuff I don't know and by all means please improve my current translation for what I thought I understood.
Waiting anxiously..
stucky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibFZ-B8J8r8&feature=related
14 Answers
Ok talked to my co-worker from Barcelona and he says this:
"I wake up" by itself is always "Me despierto". If you say "yo despierto" you're implying something like "I wake up from a dream". He doesn't expect to see this phrase by itself. I suppose there is a subtle difference. Maybe the lyric might mean
"I wake up to find you gone" as in she wakes up to the fact that he is gone rather than simply waking up.
That'd work for me. Alba, maybe that's what you meant by "awaken" ?
Thanks Alba !
Damn this must be one strong feeling she has there if "amar" doesn't cut it anymore. But you're right, this way it can all be explained better and the whole thing becomes very positive. I now see that I approached this wrong from the beginning by assuming "Algo más" must be referring to "Something more (than a friendship)" I'd still be careful with the line about lying...haha. It can easily backfire.
Not too happy about despertar vs. despertarse yet....
McFadden
Thanks for the breakdown. I suppose my problem is that there are 2 types of subjunctive as far as I see.
Type1 - Stuff might or might not happen. We don't know. Examples: Whatever you say can and will be used against you..... Todo lo que diga..... I wanted you to do it. Quería que lo hicieras.
I find this one easy to understand. However...
Type2 - Stuff that definitely did happen but yet I need the subjunctive for some reason. Example. It's incredible that this happened. Es increíble que lo pasara.
Whatever happend happened for sure, yet I use subjunctive. This is harder for me to catch.
So whenever I see a subjunctive I always wonder whether or not the stuff in the subjunctive is a fact or just a possibility. You mention the whenever...thing. If I understand this correctly then the following would be true :
It happened - Lo pasó (Pret.) Whenever it happened - Cuando lo pasara. (Imperf. Subj.)
Correct ?
Eventhough we don't know when it happend for either phrase.
Yes, I think that she's saying that there's something even better/deeper than love. The only way that the line: "Sometimes I think that I’m lying to you when I tell you that I love you" would not be upsetting would be if it were very quickly explained that now it's something more than love that I feel, some inexplicably deep connection that is unaffected by time, distance, memories of the past and pain that now fills me completely and that I'm not afraid of because without a shadow of a doubt it will never cause us any harm.
Yes, "amar" would be the ultimate love in Spanish but she is talking about something wordless beyond that. I don't think that this has anything to do w/differences b/w amar and querer. She's using them both to mean love here and what she's talking about supercedes them both.
It seems to me that in English we can say: I wake up in the morning. I awake in the morning. I awaken in the morning. I wake in the morning. I awake in the morning. Now most of these things we would not actually say on a regular basis. However, if I were trying to be poetic, I might say "I wake...awake...awaken..." I really believe that all that she is doing here is choosing a less common way to say it.
Yes, you can say "Estoy." and mean "I'm here." I've heard people say, quite regularly, "No está." when asked if someone is here. The question can also be shortened, "¿Está Maria?" "No, no está." That's just a normal thing in Spanish that seems odd to English speakers.
...eres para mí la noche (y) el día de mi vivir...Again, I think that she's using a bit of poetic license to leave out the "and" so the structure is not exactly normal. No, I don't think she's speaking of a time frame. I think that she's saying that he is everything in her life, the night, the day, the sun, the stars, the moon, the air that she breaths. She'd give her life for him, every ounce of blood in her veins....
I wish I were an expert on the subjunctive, but no. I think it's the "que" that is the trigger that the subjunctive is used because it's expressing an "intent or command for a possible action or state of being." (see spanish.about which, unfortunately, still doesn't explain it very clearly in the case of not having a trigger before the "que")
Geofc
Just saw your comment about despertar and despertarse being interchangable. I don't think that's true. Can anyone comment ?
Here is another thread I found about that
http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/110502/what-is-the-difference-between-despertar-and-despertarse
It doesn't seem to agree with you either.
McFadden
Thanks for your reply.
I'm glad I can assist you in procrastinating..haha.
As far as formatting here a link to the lyrics as I found them
http://www.lyricsbox.com/quinta-estacion-la-lyrics-algo-mas-zlg5fd6.html
- I wanted to translate "yo despierto" just like you but grammatically there seems to be no ground for it. Doesn't "I wake up" have to be translated as "Me despierto" ? Doesn't "yo despierto" imply that some direct object other than myself is being woken up by me ? If not what is the difference between "yo despierto" and "me despierto" ? Also what is she saying ? If waking up without him feels like dying doesn't that imply that she really needs/wants him there when she wakes up? That, in turn, would suggest to me that this is love but she keeps saying it isn't anymore.
I do see your point about the subjunktive. So you're saying "Whenever I kiss you every night our relationship grows etc..." ? So this stuff definitely does happen right ? It's not wishful thinking ?
As far as the blood in her veines - your reading it as "Vivir la sangre en mis venas". The way the lyrics are formatted it might just be confusion there. This would say "Blood lives in my veines" which certainly sounds more reasonable.
Can anyone confirm/deny that "mi vivir" is grammatically impossible ?
I was toying with the same ideas you expressed about whether it could be more than love but then why all the stuff about "It feels like a lie blablabla". I don't see how it could mean "Less than love" when it's called "Also más". Shouldn't it be "Algo menos" instead.
Es darte un beso cada noche que tus manos me enamoren y que lo nuestro crezca cada día más.
This is subjunctive because when it happens (his hands make her fall in love and what's theirs grows) is unspecified/indeterminate. She is not referring to a certain instance of this happening, she's saying whenever it happens. This website explains different triggers for the subjunctive, and has the following to say about adverbial clauses (which is what this is):
Adverbial clauses give information such as “when”, “why”, “how” or “where” something happens. The verb in an adverbial clauses will be in the subjunctive if the action/state in the clause is anticipated —that is, viewed as being in the future in comparison to the action/state represented by the governing verb. The indicative is used in clauses where the action is viewed as habitual or having been completed.
He doesn't explain exactly this situation, but when he says it's 'anticipated' that covers this situation. I really don't know the specifics of the grammatical trigger in this case, I just remember by high school Spanish teacher jumping up and down in front of the class shouting "¡No, no, no, no, no! ¡El carro que te gusta, no! El carro que te guste! ¡Subjuntivo! ¡Siempre subjuntivo! ¡Hay duda! ¡No sabes que carro le va a gustar!" when we were going over an exercise and I volunteered the incorrect answer. (A great fuss was made all around.) I was surprised, but I've always remembered that and been able to recognize similar situations and constructions. As I'm reading over this, this example is seeming a little less relevant. At any rate, I'm going to keep looking for a proper, more detailed explanation of why this has to be subjunctive. For right now, suffice it to say that it's because there is a lack of certainty/specificity (that perpetual subjunctive trigger!) about when exactly it happens. "Every time it happens, whenever that may be." A somewhat more relevant example would be the phrase "Cuando llegues." Say one roommate calls the other and wants to know when the other will be home so they can eat dinner. The one who's at work says she's wrapping things up. The one who's at home would say, "Comeremos cuando llegues" because she is unsure of when exactly the other will get home. The specific time of arrival is undetermined, and this triggers the subjunctive. "[...] cada noche que tus manos me enamoren y que lo nuestro crezca cada día más" is subjunctive for the same reason "cuando llegues" is.
P.S. I am with Alba on the song being positive, now that I've actually listened to it through. I think she just has an odd way of saying that what she and her boyfriend share is more than love.
Well, this used to be one of my favorite songs. It is, in my opinion, positive. She's saying that what she and her love have is something deeper than love.
Algo Más - La Quinta Estacion
A veces pienso que te miento cuando te digo que te quiero porque esto ya no es querer A veces creo que he muerto cuando no estás y yo despierto porque sé que esto ya no es querer Es algo más, algo que me llena algo que no mata ni envenena es algo más, algo más que amar
Sometimes I think that I’m lying to you when I tell you that I love you because now this isn’t love anymore. Sometimes I think that I’ve died when you aren’t here and I awaken (My guess would be that this is the difference b/w "to wake up" and "to awaken" in English. "Me despierto" is certainly the more common way to say it but I think she's just being poetic) because I know that this isn’t love anymore. It’s something more, something that fills me, something that doesn’t kill or poison. It’s something more, something more than love.
CORO Es algo más que la distancia que el dolor y la nostalgia sabemos que eso no nos va a separar Es darte un beso cada noche que tus manos me enamoren y que lo nuestro crezca cada día más Porque somos algo más...
It’s something more than distance, pain and nostalgia. We know that that isn’t going to separate us. It’s giving you a kiss every night, your hands loving me and what is ours growing more each day (I agree w/MacFadden's subjunctive explanation.) because we’re something more...
A veces creo que he vivido más de mil años contigo porque sé que esto ya no es querer A veces pienso que es mentira por cómo entraste en mi vida porque sé que esto ya no es querer Es algo más, algo que me llena algo que no mata ni envenena es algo más, algo más que amar
Sometimes I think that I’ve lived with you for more than a thousand years because I know that this isn’t love anymore. Sometimes I think that it’s a lie because of how you came into my life, (I read this as she sometimes thinks it's a lie that she's lived a 1000 years with him because she remembers how he came into her life though I'm not 100% sure) because I know that this isn’t love anymore. It’s something more....
Y yo sé que no es querer porque en tus ojos yo me puedo perder contigo olvido lo que es temer acaso no sabes que tú eres para mí la noche, el día en mi vivir la sangre en mis venas lo doy todo por ti contigo el mundo no tiene final y el tiempo no se nos va a acabar
And I know that it’s not love because I can lose myself in your eyes. With you I forget what it is to fear. Perhaps you don’t know that for me you are the night, the day in my life. (mi vivir: seems odd to me grammaticly but if you google the phrase you will find a ton of hits. It appears that it is poetic way of saying "my life") The blood in my veins, I’ll give it all for you. With you the world has no end and time won’t run out us.
alba3
Thank you ! So your take is that love is not the ultimate thing. There is something even better ? By love she means passion etc...but now they have moved to phase 2 or 3 I guess. Like the hot fire of passion has become a small but steady flame of deep love ?
While that would certainly explain a few things I still have trouble the with the lying part.
I'm pretty sure If I said to my girlfriend that telling her that I love her feels like a lie would upset her deeply. I guess that very sentence right there made the whole thing sound bad to me. If I fell out of love with her I could very well said that exact sentence no ? This only works if both parties understand that there is a next, better place than love and I think most folks would not understand it that way. I also thought "amar" was the strongest word for love reserved for people. If not what stronger word is there ?
The whole thing about how he came into her life is also still very strange to me. I see your idea but am unsure whether I can agree.
Maybe its very meaningful that she uses querer and then amar ? "Esto ya no es querer" vs. "algo más que amar". Are these 2 truly interchangable here ? Possibly she means "This is not just wanting anymore" and then "Its more than loving". Then again that wouldn't be consistent either. I thought they are currently on the "wanting" level and she feels they have moved to the "loving" level but her last sentence throws out that idea since its even more than love...hmmmm
"Mi vivir" I can buy as "My living" which isn't all that strange. Poetic creativity - that's ok with me. After all we're talking about the same girl who happily announced "Me dueles" which caused the 4th longest thread on this board. I'm still somewhat proud of that one haha.
"Yo despierto" is still the biggest mystery. "Me despierto" would have fit just as well as far as the tune goes so I can't help thinking she wanted to specifically express something other than "wake up" but what ?
It appears everyone simply takes "no estás" as short for "no estás aquí". Is that a lyrical shortcut taken from context or does the language allow for this generally ? Could I say to my girfriend "Estoy." and she would assume I'm saying "I'm here" ?
The night and day thing is probably just a weird sentence structure right ? So you're saying "acaso no sabes que tú eres para mí la noche, el día" goes together. I saw those as separate since that's how the lyrics are written down. Maybe it has a lot to do with how they coupled the sentences we'd have to re-write them differently like McFadden had started doing already.
Could she not be referring to a time frame "the day the night" meaning "all the time" ?
Since you guys agree on the subjunctive can you please break down again where exactly the trigger is ? I don't know the subjunctive very well yet but I'm trying to spot when I need it. So far I know "I want you to..."(Having 2 subjects) or "Its incredible that...." (Judging a situation) but can you help me break down this one a bit more ?
Thx
McFadden
I think I have found my equal ! Usually I'm the only one who does digging to that extend. Glad to see I'm not alone. Appreciate all your efforts - great ideas !
I have to take off for for a bit. Let's see what other folks think.
Any natives - Heidita we need you !
Alright, I looked despertar in the dictionary to see if that cast any light on the situation. It's a transitive verb, and it gives the following information for nonreflexive uses: to arouse (reacción): despertar odio/pasión -> to arouse hatred/passion; el ejercicio me despierta el apetito -> exercise gives me an appetite; despertar a alguien las ganas de hacer algo -> to make somebody want to do something
to revive, to awaken (recuerdo): esta canción despierta en mí buenos recuerdos -> this song brings back happy memories
This is a bit odd, but maybe she means she awakens something in her, not that she wakes up. That would fit with the lack of 'me'. I don't know, it's still weird, but it's a possibility.
Okay, new idea. Maybe the person who posted the lyrics misheard it and it's really:
Acaso no sabes que tú eres para mí/La noche, el día en mi viven/La sangre in mis venas.
But it really does sound like "en mi vivir' with an 'R' at the end. I don't know what's going on there. But anyway, this new reading would mean
Maybe you don't know what you are for me/ The night [and] the day live in me/ The blood in my veins
This requires more investigation.
Actually I have to correct myself
"Vivir la sangre en mis venas".
Doesn't sound right either. It should be "Vive" if anything.
Wow. Okay this is a very long question, but I have an essay I really don't want to write due in a few days, and am eager for an excuse to put it off a bit longer! Alright, here goes.
A veces creo que he muerto cuando no estás y yo despierto porque sé que esto ya no es querer.
This could mean one of two things: "Sometimes I think I've died when I wake up and you're not here, because I know this isn't love anymore." But she's chosen a sort of odd order if that's what she means, so depending on where she stops to take a breath, it might make more sense to interpret it as "Sometimes I think I've died because you're not here, and then I wake up [as in 'get it/realize/understand', not actually wake up] because I know this isn't love anymore."
Es darte un beso cada noche que tus manos me enamoren y que lo nuestro crezca cada día más.
This means "It's giving you a kiss every night your hands win my heart and our [relationship] grows. It is subjunctive because it has the structure, 'whenever this happens, something else happens.' It isn't talking about specific instances; it's saying 'all the unspecified times this happens' so it has to be subjunctive. It's the same reason 'gustar' is subjunctive in the sentence 'Escoja el carro que te guste'--the speaker doesn't know which car the other person wants; it's unspecified.
Y yo sé que no es querer porque en tus ojos yo me puedo perder/Contigo olvido lo que es temer/Acaso no sabes que tú eres para mí la noche, el día en mi/Vivir la sangre en mis venas/Lo doy todo por ti/Contigo el mundo no tiene final y el tiempo no se nos va a acabar.
I've inserted slashes to mark the line breaks to make it a bit more digestible. This means, "And now I know this isn't love because I can lose myself in your eyes/With you I forget what it is to fear/Maybe you don't know that you are for me the night, the day in me [odd; don't really get the wording there]/Live the blood in my veins[also odd, are you sure there isn't a misheard letter in here somewhere?]/I give it all for you/With you the world has no end and time will never run out for us."
Also, there are two ways to interpret "this isn't love anymore": 1) we used to be in love but not we've lost it and what we have is something less, or 2) we used to be in love but now it's beyond love, we have something more profound. She may be playing on this dual meaning with the shifting back and forth between positive and negative things, implying confusion, and their relationship being both at once.
