Noun placement
Hola Amigos,
I purchased a Spanish workbook for practice recently and I have come upon a sentence that is a bit confusing. It is the following: "Todos ellos son venezolanos". I am trying to figure out why is the noun "todos", placed at the very beginning of the sentence as opposed to after "ellos son". Thanks
4 Answers
Depending on the nuance you want, you can say it like your book does or you can say "(Ellos) son venezolanos todos" - in each case "ellos" is optional.
However to say "Ellos son todos venezolanos" is an ackward sentence structure and would indicate that they are completely Venezuelan.
"Todos ellos son venezolanos"
They all (all of them) are Venezuelan(s).
Todas las manzanas son rojas. All (of) the apples are red. (That means a red varietal).
Does that help?
Sometimes you just have learn how things expressed
If you put "Ellos son todos los venezolanos (que están aquí)"- I would interpret it as they are all of the Venezuelans that are here. Not that they are all Venezuelans (and are here).
Maybe it is best to think of "todo" as meaning "all of something" more than "all something".
Edit to add:
For some reason I am now blocked from any commenting- but I think Julian's description is very helpful as well, and I will reiterate that the important thing is to learn the patterns which Spanish speakers use to express themselves and mimic them- that will do you much better than fixating on why they express things the way they do.
Thank you for the response. What I am trying to do is determine the grammar rule at play here and when it is used. In the example you provided, it makes sense as a direct translation because "All the apples are red". In my example, however, if I were to directly translate it, it would read "All they are Venezuelans". So I am trying to figure out why would the noun (todos) come before the pronoun (ellos) in this example. Thank you
Ian , SpanishDict lists the word as a noun: http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/todos Regardless of what part of speech it is, I am still trying to figure out the functionality of the language and what rule applies to where it is placed.
