Does "nos" mean "us" in every situation?

Question

I came across two sentences in my Spanish lessons:

1. La mesera nos trae el desayuno. The waitress brings us breakfast.
2. El mesero nos trae el café. The waitor brings (us?) coffee.

In the first sentence the man receiving the meal was saying "La mesera nos trae el desayuno" so I know it is in the first person plural.

The second sentence however, in the context of my lesson, seems to be in the third person plural. So does "nos" in this case mean "them" or does it still mean "us"?

Can anyone help me? Thanks.

Answer 1

Does "nos" mean "us" in every situation?

In the scenarios that you have presented, I would say that yes, "nos" could be translated adequately as "us."

In many instances you will find that "nos" can be translated directly in this way; however, I think that it might be jumping the gun a bit to assume that this is always the case.

Sometimes, especially when you start dealing with pronominal constructions, you will find that this does not hold true. For example:

Nos cepillábamos los dientes ? We were brushing our teeth

In the sentence above, the object pronoun is simply used to show possession (i.e. whose teeth were being brushed) and does not translate word for word. This sort of construction is very common when dealing with what are considered "inalienable possessions," that is to say, possessions such as body parts or articles of clothing that are often considered extensions of the possessor.

Of course, this is not the only type of construction that might lead to a sentence that does not lend itself to a nos/us translation. Take, for instance, the following excerpt taken from a recent newspaper article:

Para no perder mucho tiempo, nos comimos una empanada cada uno ? In order not to waste a lot of time, we each ate an empanada.

Here, the pronoun is included to express the idea of completeness. That is, instead of simply saying that each person "ate it," it would probably be more accurate, in order to conserve the idea of completeness, to say that each person "ate it all up."

In any case, it would be erroneous to think that the pronoun "nos" would translate to "us" in either of the cases above, errors which might conceivably lead to translations such as the following:

?Nos cepillábamos los dientes ? We were brushing the teeth to us.

?Para no perder mucho tiempo, nos comimos una empanada cada uno ? In order not to waste a lot of time, we each ate an empanada to us.

Thanks that helps. :) - MeLlamoWaverly, Oct 26, 2011

Answer 2

Nos always means "us". In your sentence above, the waiter brings us coffee.