una sala de estar
I came across this in Rosetta Stone, and have no idea what it means. Theres a picture of a living room, but am more interested in word to word translation so i can understand it better. So if you will kindly translate for me, word for word i'd be grateful : )
4 Answers
"Sala de estar" is just a way to differenciate "living room" from "sala de conferencia" or "sala de exposiciones" etc. But when we talk about a house, it´s understood that "sala" refers to the living room of that house, so to differenciate is not necessary and we say just "sala."
It is sometimes inadvisable to just translate word for word as the Spanish meaning can get lost.
However, just adding another sala to what Julian has mentioned,
Sala de espera - Waiting-room.
i learned living room to be just "la sala"
I'm doing both Rosetta Stone and the lessons on this site, and there are numerous differences on word usage. But I learned when studying Sanskrit not to expect a 1 to 1 correlation when translating words from one language to another. So much depends on conversational usage, written vs spoken forms, regional differences, etc. in every language. One reason I find the Rosetta Stone method so effective is that we are being taught to describe what we see, rather than what words we hear in English. I find the lessons on this site very useful for filling in the gaps left by the total immersion method of RS, such as what form of a verb is being used, and thus when the action is occuring. It may be unfamiliar, but I'm trying to just let Spanish be Spanish, and not over-relate it to English.
