Dia en el zoologico

Question

My attempt at translating a note about my day at the zoo. Once again the accent marks take a back seat. Feel free to point them out if you wish, but I'm more interested in having corrections made about structure/conjugation. I use minimal reference/translator help. Thanks much in advance for any who care to read and offer corrections!

Let me tell you about our adventures. We went to the zoo and got to see the gibbons, we were fascinated! When we saw the lorikeets you were afraid of them biting you and also educated me on their tongues. We finally found a zookeeper who could answer our questions about how the animals don't escape. She made us laugh by telling us that gibbons are afraid of water.

My attempt:

Voy a decir acerca de nuestras aventuras. Fuimos al zoologico y vimos el gibbons, estuvimos fascinamos. Cuando vimos el lorikeets(?) estuvo tema de lo a morder y tambien me enseño acerca de ellos lenguas. Terminamos encontramos un jefe de zoologico quien puse contesta nos las preguntas en ¿como la animales no pueden deje? Nos hizo risa dije "las animales son miedo al agua."

I know this is VERY rough. Thank you!

Answer 1

Accent marks are part of the spelling of the word. They are not there for decoration. They tell you what syllable to stress. If you leave out the accent mark, many times you actually have a completely different word with a different pronunciation. That said, here are my corrections:

Les voy a contar de nuestras aventuras. Fuimos al zoológico y vimos los gibones. Estuvimos fascinados. Cuando vimos los loriquitos, tenía miedo de que me mordieran y también aprendí de sus lenguas. Por fin encontramos a una cuidadora de los animales que pudo contestar nuestras preguntas acerca de cómo los animales no se escapan. Nos hizo reír diciéndonos que los gibones le tenían miedo al agua.

Thanks much! What is the difference between tenian and tenían? - steric, Aug 27, 2011

Syllable stress. "tenían" is pronounced te-NI-an, while "tenian" (which is not a word in Spanish) would be pronounced TE-nian. - gintar77, Aug 27, 2011

Got it! - steric, Aug 27, 2011

Answer 2

Accent marks are part of the spelling of the word. They are not there for decoration. They tell you what syllable to stress. If you leave out the accent mark, many times you actually have a completely different word with a different pronunciation.

Absolutely! Here are a few examples of words spelled the same but with different meanings due to tilde placement:

Mendigo ....... Beggar ....... Méndigo ..... Very low class, bad person

Solo ...... Alone ....... sólo ...... only/just

Sé ...... I know ..... se .... Imperative, familiar you "to be" ..... se .... reflexive and passive voice indicator

Answer 3

I suggest you learn the accent mark placement as you go... it's really easy and becomes second nature before too long... but will be much harder to learn later.

'animal' is masculine

el animal, los animales

Thank you! - steric, Aug 27, 2011