A menudo = often = souvent
When ever I look up the work "often" (english) or "souvent" (french) into spanish the result is "a menudo". How is that possible? Every source gives me the same answer. They also give me other possibilities.
But it seems weird when menudo means small. So is "a menudo" correct in Spain and Latin America?
Thanks
3 Answers
Yes 'a menudo' = Frequently/often
'A menudo' is an idiom, and as such, colloquial expressions rarely translate into anything intelligible when translated into another language You just need to accept that it is not always possible to make literal sense of idioms.
¿Qué tal? = how are you? / How are things going ? Qué = what? / que (without accent) = that. tal -such but ... 'what such?' does not make sense when translated into English lol.
Idioms in one language eg French may not have a direct equivalent in another language or the expression may simply make no sense to the native speakers of that country since it may not have have any cultural relevence for them.
As far as cultural relevance goes I can give you a brief example. When I was about 16 years of age and fairly ignorant about the daily lifestyle of french people I tried to explain to a young French girl about milkmen delevering milk every morning . Admittedly, my french was far from fluent but the girl understood the heart of the sentance but couldn't make sense of the concept of a milkmen because it was outside her experience -they don't have milkmen in France they buy it themselves in shops.
I hope this helps 
No vemos esta pregunta a menudo. (jeje) Sometimes you just have to accept that that is how it is and not analyze too much when you are a learning a different language!
often=frequently=every little once in a while=at short intervals
Do the last two seem weird to you?
