Oir + Hablar

Question

Hola a todos,

I came across a new construction today and did a little homework to try to figure it out. Here is the sentence I found in my Spanish Linguistics text.

"Oír hablar así a la gente me da miedo."

The only context for this sentence is that it is under a section on Indirect Objects and the possible literal or metaphorical meanings they can take on.

The dictionary here suggests that "oír hablar de" means "to hear it said that" so can this sentence translate to:

"To hear it said like this to the people scared me / It scared me to hear it said like this to the people"

Or does it mean "to hear about" as in "It scared me to hear about the people like this."?

thanks in advance!

Excellent question, unfortunately I can't answer it. Honestly, that construction seems completely wrong to me, but I'm not a native speaker so it's not safe to say that it's wrong. - Vida_de_Scott, May 7, 2013

The double infinitive construction is new to me too. I feel like it doesn't get much attention considering we are taught that when 2 verbs are next to each other you would conjugate the first and leave the second in the infinitive form. - zarazara, May 8, 2013

Oh my goodness! you are going to have some fun with the perfect moods! - Vida_de_Scott, May 8, 2013

Answer 1

"Oír hablar así a la gente me da miedo."

To hear people speaking this way scares me.

Remember that the English gerund is used as the infinitive in Spanish. The personal a here refers to la gente - it is not directional. If we remove hablar así, it would be Oír a la gente ............. so in either case the personal a belongs to la gente.

¡Muchas gracias! This makes much more sense to me now. I was getting tied up in the unusual word order here. - zarazara, May 8, 2013

Answer 2

Th e SD dictiionary under the word "oir" has the example "Oir hablar de" which is translated as " to hear it said that"....so it is an special idiom that does not translate literally.