se lo podemos arreglar?
There's an ad on a Spanish station (Sacramento, CA) for a body shop where the jingle goes like this: "¡Si se lo puede chocar, nosotros se lo podemos arreglar!" Is that good Spanish? Or maybe I'm hearing it wrong?
6 Answers
"Si Usted lo puede chocar nosotros se lo podemos arreglar" is the actual phrase; I copied it off the website. I apologize for mishearing it and writing it wrong. But why is the "se" in the second clause?
Now it´s correct.
"se" takes the place of "le"
If you can crash it, we can fix it for you.
Without "se," it would be simply "..... we can fix it."
It is not correct Spanish.
- !Si se choca, se lo podemos arreglar! = If you crash your car, we can fix it!
- !Si se chocó, se lo podemos arreglar! = If you crashed your car, we can fix it!
"Si Usted lo puede chocar nosotros se lo podemos arreglar" is the actual phrase; I copied it off the website. I apologize for mishearing it and writing it wrong. But why is the "se" in the second clause?
I wonder if it would be OK like this:
If you can crash it we can fix it.
¡Si se lo puede chocar, lo podemos arreglar! I don't see why they used se in the second clause, but it sounds ok to my ear like this.
or
¡Si se puede chocarlo, lo podemos arreglar! t
It's poetic licence, so to speak, in order to pull off the rhyme with -ar.
But I do wonder:
"Si se lo puede chocar" -- is the "se" here standing in for "le" or is it intended to indicate passive voice? In other words, should this be translated "If you can crash it" or "If it can be crashed?"
I think Farallon7's translations are more "normal" grammatically 
That's a good one, arreglar VS arreglarse. I always thought arreglar was like "to fix" and "arreglarse" was like "to fix it up - to make it better" but lately I can't give anything as fact, too much to learn that I don't know.
