cierta noticia vs. noticia cierta

Question

I know that when an adjective is placed before or after a noun, the meaning is different. However, how to tell what they mean troubles me very much. For example, when I typed "cierta noticia" and "noticia cierta", or "pobre hombre" and "hombre pobre", SD's translator gave me the same translation.

My questions are:

How do you translate them respectively?

And how to tell their meanings? Do you have any tips?

Or, is there a list of the most commonly used pairs for beginners to look at?

Good questions Joy. - rogspax, Oct 20, 2013

Answer 1

I know this is not all encompassing, but have you read there very good article here on SpanishDict?

And there´s a bit more over here

This is in my opinion just a good start to get the lay of the land. After that, I think that you have to just slowly absorb the specific use cases as you run across them.

Buena suerte.

Muchas gracias! The two links are very helpful! But after reading them, I found there seems to be something contradictory about "dulce", which means "good/nice" beofre a noun but "sweet" after a noun. - joygogo, Oct 21, 2013

But the example sentence one of the articles gave “La dulce miel es deliciosa en pan tostado” is translated as “Sweet honey is delicious on toast.” - joygogo, Oct 21, 2013

Answer 2

You have to understand what each word means, it isn't a matter of just using them.

Certain = some

Certain = true

See the diff?

Note the meaning of it when it is in front of the word as opposed to being after the word is modifying.

All this is English

Try it and come back with your thoughts.

Hola, chileno. My learning problem is as soon as I see "noticia cierta" or "cierta noticia", I don't know it means "some/certain news" or "true news". Even though thinking about it many times, I still get confused. But the articles Rog offered helps. - joygogo, Oct 21, 2013