Resource for understanding the excessive usage of "que?"
I'm studying for the CLEP exam and I've got most things down. But I find random uses of "que" everywhere that I know of no rule which explains.
Este es un ciclo dedicado a los creadores y escritores QUE en Espana, los Estados Unidos, mas concretamente en el sur de la Florida.
Entre en la casa sin que nadie se diera cuenta.
I understand what the sentence means, but I find myself going through these sentences looking at terms like that and just chalking them up to "pointless words that don't add to the sentence" and I ignore them.
Referencing http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/relproelque.htm , you find other general uses of "que", but I don't see this rule.
4 Answers
I'm Spanish native speaker and I think there is no such a thing as "excessive usage" for relative pronoun que.
For example, your first sentence seems incomplete: Este es un ciclo dedicado a los creadores y escritores QUE en Espana, los Estados Unidos, más concretamente en el sur de Florida... ([....] that in Spain, USA and specially in southern Florida...) that... what? Can you see it? There is a lack of information. If you only what to say that they are from these places it would be: Este es un ciclo dedicado a los creadores y escritores de Espana, los Estados Unidos, más concretamente del sur de Florida.
Entré en la casa sin que nadie se diera cuenta. In this case the use of que is totally needed. María Victoria Pavón Lucero says "In Spanish, if a preposition takes a sentential complement headed by a finite verb, the sentence must be introduced by the complementizer que (‘that’)." Reference: http://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/10016/11999/1/locative_pavon_CJL_2010.pdf
Rather than adding information, relative pronoun que sometimes in used as a grammar tool.
Another resource: http://spanish.about.com/od/pronouns/a/que_relative_pronouns.htm
Chyeco's answer is excellent. I just want to say that it's no point referring back to your base language.
Just accept that the language you're learning is how it is. Different!
In my language the verbs are incredibly simple, they stay the same in all persons, but our nouns have two different kind of neuter. A southern European learning a Scandinavian language would make little probgress if he/she were not to accept this striking difference!
One can well argue that many of the words we say are unnecessary. That doesn't make it correct to eliminate them, unless you want to sound moronic.
The word que is used a lot in Spanish and in English it can be left out.
There is a grammar rule for when we can do this.
The relative pronouns who, whom, which and that can be omitted (that is, they are treated as understood) when they function as the object of a verb or the object of a preposition. (not when they are a subject of a verb)
I know of no rule for when this can be done in Spanish.
Example:
You know (that) I love you. = You know I love you.
Sabes que te amo.
Don't leave the English ones out when using a translator it gets confused.
You can't just "chalk things up to pointless words..." just because you don't understand why it's there and can't find an explanation.
It can be difficult to find the answer at times, but that just means you need to find the correct resources to help you find the answers. Until then you just have to keep a look out for similar structures elsewhere and try to glean some insight from seeing it used it other contexts.
Also trying searching for grammatical explanations not just on English sites, but on Spanish grammar sites as well.
