how do i use the verb faltar?

Question

i want to know how to use the verb faltar. for example how do i say: the money is short of ten dollars?

Answer 1

Me faltan diez dólares. I'm ten dollars short.

The topic sentence says nothing about who was shortchanged, only that there was a shorfall .m The use of "me" is completely unjustified. - samdie, Apr 6, 2011

Thanks, I realize that but the topic sentence really doesn't make much sense. I was just giving an example. - pescador1, Apr 6, 2011

Answer 2

(A + person_name) + Indirect Object pronoun + falta(n) + missing_thing_or_amount.

The indirect object is the person affected or involved in the situation; the pronoun should be me/te/le/nos/os/les, and the part in bracket is only used when clarification is necessary. The last part of the sentence is the subject, which should agree with the verb, e.g. falta una cosa, faltan dos cosas.

Al dinero le faltan diez dolares? (I never would have guessed that) - 0074b507, Apr 6, 2011

Not quite. The person lacking follows the "a" A mí me falta, A él le faltan, A ustedes les falta, A Juan le faltan, Only the 3rd person pronouns or names might be needed for clarification, but the a mí, a ti, etc. could be used for emphasis. - DilKen, Mar 4, 2015

A los Toros de Chicago les falta Derrick Rose. :( The Chicago Bulls miss Derrick Rose. - DilKen, Mar 4, 2015

Answer 3

Faltar can be thought of as a verb like gustar which share the same formula as Lazarus pointed out it his post here:

(A + person_name) + Indirect Object pronoun + falta(n) + missing_thing_or_amount.

However, in many cases the indirect object is left out as in the following cases from the dictionary:

Faltan profesores. There aren't enough teachers

Faltan viviendas asequibles There is a shortage of affordable housing

Faltan dos sillas We are two chairs short

I don't know if these are completely correct grammatically, but I have seen it often. When this is done there is a sense that the thing that is lacking is lacking to people in general rather than a specific person lacking something. When constructed this way it sort of reminds me of the impersonal se. Other times it is a specific person lacking, but the context makes it clear who is lacking and the indirect object pronoun is left out then as well. One thing is clear, however, the verb needs to be conjugated according to the number of the things that are lacking, not the number of the people that lack something.

I also see the indirect object left out when "the object that has the shortage" is a thing rather than a person. For example:

Assuming the context has already established that we are talking about a car:

It needs oil. Falta aceite.

Here is a snippet from an article from www.spanish.about.com that indicates that in actual use with the meaning of something remaining as opposed to lacking, the use of the indirect object is often omitted:

To indicate what remains: The common construction used, as in the following examples, is "optional pronoun + faltar + what remains + para + the goal."

Faltan cinco días para Navidad. Five days remain until Christmas. There are five days to go until Christmas.

Faltaban dos segundos para terminar el juego. There were two seconds to go to end the game.