Yo me voy/Ya me voy

Question

I've been listening to the Spanish audio series by Pimsleur and I'm still having a little trouble with something.

The lessons say that "I am leaving" is "Yo me voy." My girlfriend, (a native Spanish speaker) says it's "Ya me voy." Although I will tend to take her word for it, I'm still a little puzzled.

If it's "Yo" then to me the sentence looks like, "Me, I, I will go." So where is the context for "leave" rather than "go"?

If it's "Ya" I"m puzzled for a different reason. I don't quite get the usage of "Ya." I've looked at the dictionary here on line and my hard copy and I still can't grasp the context in this case.

All help is appreciated. I'm still very much a beginner, but I'll get there!

Answer 1

I'm shuddering!

Please don't tell me "video's" or "how r u'" will ever be standards...

Answer 2

I feel your pain, brother. It's also rare to see someone use lie/lay properly. Even TV news reporters and newspaper writers seem to have been absent for many of their English classes.

But then, language is a living thing, and constantly changes. What you and I consider errors may be the standards of tomorrow.

Answer 3

"Most native speakers learn their language only by absorption"

Sadly, too true for English.

English grammar wasn't taught in English schools for years, and neither was proper spelling. Too many people below the age of about 35 have dreadful spelling, because they weren't shown that it is important - things like there/their/they're, your/you're, two/to/too - and someone who can properly place an apostrophe is a rarity.

The upside is that speakers of English as a second language can get it wrong and a lot of native English writers wouldn't notice, but that doesn't make it right...

Answer 4

¡¡¡me voy!!!

¡¡¡Me largo!!!!
jejejeje

Answer 5

The problem is, we learned
" i before e except after c"

Answer 6

James is quite right:

No sé si voy o vengo.

Yes, motley, very confusing.

Voy!!! (I'm) coming!!

Answer 7

googit = Google hit

Counting googits for various words or phrases is a good way to judge their frequency of usage. For example, gooling wierd gets 15 million hits (showing that lots of English speakers have spelling difficulties), but googling the correct spelling gets 145 million.

Answer 8

I want to reply to SLP2008's post, but for some reason there is no "Reply to this" link after her post.

Anyway, "No sé si estoy yendo o viniendo" gets only one lonesome googit, and while I'm not positive, I believe the best way to express this in Spanish is "No sé si voy o vengo" (over 1100 googits). Note that the order is reversed between English and Spanish.

Answer 9

I'm also messing up my post.

Answer 10

This is on wordreference

'irse verbo reflexivo
1 (marcharse) to go away, leave: me voy, I'm off
¡vámonos!, let's go!
¡vete!, go away!
vete a casa, go home ? Ver nota en leave
2 (líquido, gas) (escaparse) to leak
3 (direcciones) ¿por dónde se va a...', which is the way to...?
4 (gastar) to go, be spent: no sé en qué se me fue el dinero, I don't know where the money went
Ten cuidado con este verbo. La traducción más común es to go, pero sólo cuando expresa la idea de alejarse de quien habla o del oyente. Si, por el contrario, implica un acercamiento al hablante o al oyente, entonces es mejor usar el verbo to come: ¡Voy! Coming! Esta regla también se aplica a los verbos compuestos como go o come out (salir), go o come in (entrar), go o come up (subir), go o come down (bajar), etc.

Now we have voy as coming, Dios mios

I don't know if I'm coming or going, which is true but how would you say it.

No sé si vengo o si me voy
'''''

Answer 11

I don't know if I am coming or going, which is true but how would you say it'

Ya no sé si voy o vengo.

Answer 12

now we have voy as coming.

Ir and venir do not map perfectly to go and come. In Spanish, ir is always used to refer to moving away from the subject's current location, and venir to refer to moving toward the subject's current location. So when Lalo says "I'm coming" (Ya voy) in my example, he uses ir because he is moving away from his current location toward his mother. This actually makes perfect sense when you think about it, and English is the illogical one in this case.

Answer 13

David, You are right, but the indicative present has it's irregularities, were consonants ( Z and G ) are added before the ends cer, cir, nir, ner:
Agradecer= Agradezco.
Conocer= Conozco.
Producir= produzco.
Merecer= merezco.
permanecer: permanezco.
Entonces: Envejecer= envejezco.
Venir= vengo.
Poner= pongo.
Tener= tengo.

Answer 14

As James said: "Yo" is unnecessary because it's implicit in te word "Me" ( which is a personal prnoun in 1st. person/ who speaks).

Answer 15

It's all smoke and mirrors.

But thanks all the same!