Follow-up on lesson 3.4 typo?
I understand from the responses to my first question that the sentence : " Paró de fumar hace 10 años" is grammatically correct.
My confusion is in whether the verb "parar" - to stop someone or something, or the verb "pararse" - to stop oneself , should be used
I thought that if the person made a personal decision to change his mode of living by giving up smoking he was in fact the agent of the action and the object of the action was himself or herself. Therefore, the reflexive verb seemed appropriate. Hence, "Se paró de fumar hace 10 años." seemed appropriate since I thought that was the idea being communicated.
I reasoned that " Paró de fumar hace 10 años" could be interpreted to mean he or she imposed a ban on smoking in general, such as a manager of a restaurant or a head of a household can set rules. Again, while grammatically correct, does it convey the right message? Given this information can someone explain with examples the proper use of the vers "parar" and "pararse" and what meaning is to be assigned to the sentence in the lesson. (editor - links to Answers don't work fyi)
2 Answers
Actually, it is rather the other way around.
"Parar de fumar" - to stop smoking.
(Él) Paró de fumar -(he) stopped smoking
Usted paró de fumar.
Yo paré de fumar.
Nosotros paramos de fumar.
Now, I may want to say that in this office, smoking was halted 10 years ago. That is the only case in which we could use the form:
"En esta oficina se paró de fumar hace diez años."
"Se paró" means "it was stopped". In this office, smoking was stopped ten years ago.
I hope that clarifies things for you.
If you have further questions with this subject, please don't open another thread. Simply write another answer within this same thread, or write a comment below the answer that interests you.
The explanation given above is a big help. On page 346 of "501 Spanish Verbs" the verb pararse is conjugated but the uses of the reflexive form of the verb parar are not illustrated with sentences.
You have explained that se paró means it was stopped. How is me paré to be translated. How about an example of the present and the future? It appears that the reflexive form of parar has very limited use. I wonder why it was included in"501 Spanish Verbs"?
