lock
if i want to say in spanish the proper way to lock the door
12 Answers
I've never heard that. I guess that Mexicans and other Central Americans , due to the proximity to US are prone to use these kind of expresions. Did you ever heard one saying "Por favor llamame pa'atras (para atras). They are just tranlating "call me back". This is another aberration (for me) but I've heard it more than once from Mexican friends I have here in the US
Cerrar la puerta con llave.
That's exactly the meaning we will give it in Argentina. I would never use "loquear" for "to lock the door". "Cerrar (la puerta) con llave" is the correct expresion. This is the same as using "resetear" (a computer) instead of "reiniciar".
But in 1066, "English" was primarily a Germanic language (the Romans hadn't mixed much with the locals, and had changed the local language relatively little), and therefore lacked the Latin roots of the French words used by the conquerors. That didn't stop the French aristocracy from introducing thousands of new words, all of which were certainly incomprehensible to the locals at the time of their introduction. So the fact that people in Spain don't yet know what loquear means doesn't necessarily mean anything about whether loquear is a good or bad word. It's just new.
L'Académie française is currently trying vainly to keep English from encroaching on the "pure" French language (which is ironic, since French is just a corruption of "pure" Latin), but they are failing horribly. Not because English is a better or more dominant language, but because the world's languages are slowly merging. Even English is constantly importing new words, from languages all over the world. This trend will only accelerate in the future.
I'm not saying that Spanish people should start saying loquear, since there is apparently no real need for it to fill there. But if it should ever start being used in Spain, I would see nothing at all wrong with that.
I think it's good and right to learn the correct sentences first, then think about slangs. "serrar" works for me because it means "close". Can I use "trancar"?
Marco
I've just asked a few Spanish natives (from Spain) whether they knew what "loquear" means (and without telling them why I was asking). They all answered the same: "Of course! It means to behave crazily" (como un loco). That's what I meant when I said that it is a bad idea to use alien roots to form words. English expresses with several words what we say in Spanish with a single one, and viceversa. There is nothing wrong with that, in my opinion.
But what does "proper" mean? It all depends on the context. If you are writing an article for publication, then clearly cerrar con llave is the proper way to say "to lock." But if you are living in California and talking to someone, loquear is perfectly proper, in my opinion.
Language is not static, it's dynamic. A huge part of modern English was forcibly introduced from French hundreds of years ago, and was then adapted to English needs, just as "to lock" has been adapted to the needs of Spanish speakers here as loquear. No one knows which of these neologisms will survive and eventually become part of the official corpus of Spanish, but I don't think we should be too quick to put them down.
It's also a question of dialect. An air mattress in the US is a lilo in England, and neither is more proper or correct than the other. Naturally, I don't think loquear is on the same level as this, but it is part of a dialect of Spanish, and shouldn't be treated as merely a mistake or uneducated usage.
The question was how to say "PROPERLY," to lock the door, so cerrar la puerta con llave gets my vote.
You're right: it is truly unacceptable when a proper word already exists in Spanish, and it is just replaced with a poor imitation from an English one. Still, I would have preferred a Latin-based creation, like "serar" (the first word I came up with), which at least we can relate to other words in our language, like "cerrar (close) and "sarta", which refers to things joined together. "Loquear", without a context, would suggest "loco" (crazy, mad) to me and to other native, because the Germanic root is alien to us and to our language.
I know it hurts, but loquear is definitely in use over here. Just this morning a guy removing asbestos from my basement asked me "¿Quieres loquear la puerta'"
Actually, I think this one isn't so bad, since the "real" Spanish (cerrar con llave) is rather cumbersome, and it is convenient to have a single verb to mean "to lock." However, there are other words in use here that ARE bad, such as vacunar for to vacuum (limpiar con aspiradora) and grocería for grocery store. Those are abominations because they hijack existing Spanish words for another meaning.
Loceastes? Oh mi God!!! Everyday a new aberration for breakfast, as usual. Why not a Latin root, like "serar", with the same etymological meaning as "lock"'
cierra la puerta, or you could say ponle el seguro. or you could use slang and say lo loceastes? sort of asking if they locked it.(:
