cayéndose?

Question

Will someone please explain exactly what "cayéndose" means?

For example: ¿Está él cayéndose? No, él no está cayéndose.

I think these sentences translate as: Is he falling? No, he is not falling.

I know it is something like "cayendo," but I'm not sure what the difference is.

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

"Cayendo" is simply "falling", going down under the gravitational pull, while "cayéndose" means "falling (from an equilibrium position after something disturbed it)".

For example: ¿Está él cayéndose? No, él no está cayéndose.

Both are wrong, I'm afraid. The former could be "¿Está cayéndose?" or "¿Se está cayendo?", but both are unlikely sentences. The latter could be "No, no se está cayendo" or "No, no está cayéndose", and again, both are unlikely sentences. "Caer" could be seen as a long process if you consider leaves, raindrops or parachutists, but in all other cases, it is normally a fast and violent occurrence, and "caerse" considers how the whole thing went from being stable to fall. These fast events are normally so fast, that questions such as "Is this book falling?" are unlikely to be asked.

It was on Rosetta Stone, LatinAmerican Spanish. There was a picture of people in various stages of falling. So, I guess it would be slow, if captured forever as a pic. haha. - MrSillyInc, Jul 30, 2011

I said "it is normally a fast...": normally. How people perceive things and how things are worded can be different things. - lazarus1907, Jul 30, 2011

Answer 2

Sometimes in English we translate forms of "caerse" as "to fall down" or "to fall over". In the case of this video, it seems as though a comfortable translation would be "Is he falling down?"

Students of English find our use of prepositions hooked onto a verb confusing; in Spanish many times these verbal constructions are represented with reflexives. In this case, "caer" would be "to fall" and "caerse" would be to fall down or to fall over.