¿tu o su ? ¿Qué usar?

Question

Hola

I have seen the following two sentences in lesson 4.2:

Puedes tener frambuesa, cerezas o arándanos en su helado.

Puedes pedir el bistec o el hígado para su plato principal.

I wonder whether there is a linguistic mistake in these two sentences?

In one hand Puedes is used in tú form, and on the other hand su is used in the usted form. Am I right?

Muchas gracias

Answer 1

Good point Moh1, if the ice cream in the example belongs to the subject of the sentence, tu would be used to be consistent. It's technically possible without knowing any context that the su refers to someone else's ice cream, but your observation is right, the informal adjective should agree with the informal verb.

Answer 2

What do you mean by "it is not Spanish at all"? I am afraid I don't understand what you mean by that.

With that's not Spanish, I mean that if you say that to a native speaker, he won't understand what you mean.

It is a very bad literal translation. The English version use verbs like can and have, which don't work in Spanish in the same way.

You can does not mean the Spanish "puedes"

Have does not mean the Spanish "tener"

...and the whole Spanish sentence is confusing. Unless you speak English, you don't know what on Earth it means.

How would you say the same concept in Spanish? - Netjert, Dec 28, 2011

Supongo que quiere decir él que se puede *poner* frambuesas/etc. en helado (tuyo?). Yo también tengo curiosidad en como sta idea está expresada. - Goldie_Miel, Dec 28, 2011

Answer 3

You are right, as Jeremias pointed.

And more importantly, maybe:

Puedes tener frambuesa, cerezas o arándanos en tu helado.

What does this mean? The expression "puedes tener X en tu Y" is not Spanish, at all. This is not understood, at least by those who cannot speak English.

What do you mean by "it is not Spanish at all"? I am afraid I don't understand what you mean by that. - MOH1, Dec 28, 2011