podemos usar mirar como parecer?

Question

in Spanish, can we use the verb mirar as flexibly as we use look in English? in English we use it as a substitute for to seem often.

en español, podemos usar el verbo mirar tan flexible como usamos to look en ingles? en ingles lo usamos como un sustituto para parecer con frecuencia.

por ejemplo: this restaurant looks good = este restaurante mira bien? o tiene que ser "este restaurante parece bien?

Good question. I'll be interested to read the answer. - territurtle, Aug 27, 2011

Answer 1

Sí con "se mira bien" pero mejor con "se ve bien". Se ve es lo normal.

Answer 2

por ejemplo: this restaurant looks good = este restaurante mira bien? o tiene que ser "este restaurante parece bien?

If "este restaurante mira bien", the restaurant has eyes, since it "mira", and its eyesight must be excellent, because it does it well (bien). English is rather unique in its ability to construct mediopassive sentences like "It looks good" or "These trousers washes well" just through context, without changing the normal construction at all. Thus, only common sense tells you that the restaurant has no eyes and the trousers are not the ones operating the washing machine, but merely passive objects of actions performed by unmentioned active subjects.

Spanish (and most languages in the planet) cannot do that without modifying the "normals" sentence. Spanish almost systematically resorts to using "se" in these cases: "se mira bien", "se lava bien". But as jeezzle said, "se mira bien" sounds rather strange, because it still means that people "look well at it". English is too flexible sometimes.

Answer 3

This is just a specific example of a very common phenomenon and really has nothing to do with the flexibility of one language or the other.

There are many words that are used like that even though they are not supposed to, according to the dictionary. I recommend that you read "English Mediopassive Constructions" for a thorough analysis of this phenomenon. This extract from the book highlights the greater flexibility of English over German in this constructions, for example:

The constructional flexibility of English has also been noted in typological studies. In comparison with German, for instance, English subjects are semantically more diverse: the number of semantic roles that can be mapped onto the subject relation is greater in English than in German.

very interesting, i love those kinds of studies - jz900, Aug 28, 2011

Answer 4

In English, the two different uses of look correspond to different definitions of the word (other words of sensation like feel and taste are similar). Lots of words in both Spanish and English have several different definitions, and usually these other definitions are different in the two languages for pairs of words that happen to agree with each for one choice of each of their definitions. This is just a specific example of a very common phenomenon and really has nothing to do with the flexibility of one language or the other.

Answer 5

There are many words that are used like that even though they are not supposed to, according to the dictionary.

But look, feel, and taste are supposed to be used in those two ways, among others, according to the dictionary.

I am not familiar with the book that you mention, nor have I read widely on the subject of language and grammar. However, much of the unofficial flexibility of English seems to come from making new nouns out of verbs and vice versa, rather than from inventing slightly different meanings as verbs for existing verbs.