Hope and expectation
I notice that "hope" and "expect" both translate to "esperar" in Spanish. In English they have different, though similar, meanings. "Hope" means the emotional state of a person, "I hope I win the lottery" and "expect" is more like an informed notion that something is going to happen: "I expect him to pay me back, he always does." Now I also "hope" he pays me back but I have no expectation of winning the lottery. How does Spanish deal with these differences'
5 Answers
This is similar to my [url=my.spanishdict.com/forum/topic/show'id=1710195%3ATopic%3A539962]question[/url]
To answer your specific question of how to say "I expect him to pay me back, he always does," I think the verb will vary with the nuance and the context.
For instance, you might say "Le exigo que me pague el préstamo" if the nuance is that you are demanding repayment. If the nuance is that you are certain of his repayment, you could say "Estoy seguro (sé muy bien) que me va a pagar el préstamo, que siempre lo paga."
Dinner is at eight. I expect you to be there.
Cenamos a las ocho. Quiero que estés/vengas/etc.
Pergoles:
In English they have different, though similar, meanings.
That's because English is using a Germanic root (hope) and a Latin one (expect). Both "esperar" and "expect" come from Latin "expectare", which means "wait" and "hope". Notice that in English, "to expect" is not necessarily to hope, but "expectation", from the same verb, is pretty close to hope.
However, in Spanish, "esperar" in not normally used for things which we don't really want to happen, so in a way, it is closer to "to hope" than it is to "wait" when you're expecting an outcome (a favourable one, generally), and it is "to wait" when it means to allow time to pass until something expected happens.
P.S. I have another question, though. How do you say "expected value" in Spanish? It's from statistics and it means the weighted mean / average (for example, when calculating the mathematical "expected value" of a lottery ticket).
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[url=http://my.spanishdict.com/forum/topic/show'id=1710195%3ATopic%3A539962]See this.[/url]
