A little vocabulary question

Question

A new vocabulary item I am learning is "sufrir muchas presiones" (suffer many pressures). A syntax that would seem better to a person who speaks American English is 'sufrir mucho presión". I suppose either could be used. Right?

Answer 1

The following are all possible:

Estar sujeto a una presión muy grande.

Tener mucha presión (psicológica o física).

Sufrir muchas presiones or Sufrir una presión muy fuerte (or muy grande).

My favorite are:

Ser víctima de muchas presiones.

Aguantar mucha presión or muchas presiones.

Answer 2

That might indeed sound more natural to us, but it would sound less natural to them.

Presion seems to be,, as Jubilado said, mostly a physics quantity, and indeed I've seen just that in tech documents.

But if you want our "I'm under a lot of pressure" you really need to stick to "Sufro muchas presiones"

Again, a native can speak to it better, and no doubt soon will, but from my observation, the above, and Jubilado's, is how it seems to work.

R

Pax tecum, rogspax, Francobollo is the native speaker so we'll follow his counsel. - Jubilado, Dec 9, 2012

Answer 3

Looking on this link for the definition:

http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=presion

It seems that the singular deals with the physical property of pressure - a measurable thing: Blood pressure, atmospheric pressure.

While the plural deals with what we conceive as psychological "pressure".

This is just an educated guess so hopefully there will be more input for your question.