google translate confusions
Preface: I made a friend in Mexico on my last trip and we've been online chatting for a bit. Complication: I don't really speak/write Spanish and ditto for him with English. Hence both of us are using Google Translate which makes for sometimes hilarious and oftentimes completely uninterpretable paragraphs. I will be asking questions here from time to time -- really appreciate any help!
Question: I sent a message to my friend saying I was missing the beach ("echo de menos la playa"), to which he responded:
"Cuando dices hecho de menos la playa es como decir no me importa pero se que te has confundido eso espero"
... which I can only loosely interpret as "echo de menos la playa" is a euphemism for "I don't care"
Is this so? And, what would be the correct form of saying "I miss the beach"?
9 Answers
"Echar de menos" does in fact mean "to miss" but this term is more commonly used in Spain and not in Mexico. There we would say, ie: "extraño mucho la playa."
Como Scrabble buscador de palabras: e-c-h-a-r, h-a-c-e-r?
And right out of the Brothers Karamazov to boot.
"ditto for him", jeje. Sounds like a letter to Ann Landers or one of those place books for instant Sunday sermons.
Echar/hacer, Hecho/echo--tan muchos rompecabezas, tan poco cerebro.
Robots or no robots, the trouble with this story is that no robot is going to misread hecho/echo. Misunderstand, sí--misread, no.
Un juego o dislexia o ambos?
It could also be male pride - better to say I miss the time we spent together at the beach!
Tan muchos juegos, tan poco tiempo: hacer de menos/ echar de menos.
