Intermediate - Assault with a firearm V: Barbie goes on the Attack

Esti, you're the best!  Love it!

Pero esta vez, ¿ni un solo chipirón?  Ayy, ¡qué pena!  De verdad, desde que empezó esta serie, es mi palabra favorita.

Y ahora la foto tiene sentido con el pasamontaña rosado, aunque no podemos ver las orejas.  Me estaba preguntando sobre eso antes (el color).

Me gusta escuchar esta serie en sucesión durante mi jornada, muy divertido. 

¡Más, más!  jajajaja

¡Qué gracioso serie! Seguro que habran niños que querrán tener sus fotos tomadas con estos conejos grandes.

I cannot get the audio review to work on this lesson and others is it just me having this problem? It worked fine yesterday.

worked fine for me although i had to download it first. Windows media player is very picky about what it plays online these days.

Brilliant thanks donperigo I downloaded and it's working now.

Is the literal translation of this I will have to laugh?

Me tendré que reír.
(I have to laugh.)

gravitygirl80,

Me tendré que reír. I will have to laugh.

Me tengo que reír. I have to laugh.

as you were, what esti said. :-)

ok, had to run this morning or be late for work but what i started to say before esti posted the answer was that the Me at the beginning makes me think that the verb is tenerse so it probably means something like i will have to laugh at myself i.e. not take things so seriously.

can anyone tell me why im wrong surely i will have to laugh is simply tendré que reir or Yo tendré que reir if you want to stress that its yourself who must laugh

Is the verb tenerse?  and if so, why the need for the reflexive?

donperigo,

it's not the verb tener but the verb reír which is reflexiv! Merriam-Webster gives the translations:

reír: to laugh, reírse: to laugh at

What is a bit confusing here is that the personal pronoun can go before or after the "verb group" which includes "tengo que" (or "tendré que"):

me tengo que reír = tengo que reírme

(I learned that there is no difference between these two variants, but native speakers will probably hear a difference; that's probably a good question for pa' que sepas! :)

martinillo

many thanks for your help,

so an even more accurate translation would be
Me tendré que reír   -  i will have to laugh at..... 

ive been bitten by this before and i think im with Im with AJ on this one. This is impásabul!
seriously though how do we know its not tenerse? is there a secret way of stressing the reflexive verb so we know which one the floating pronoun belongs to?

Hmm, how do we know? I guess we don't. Except that those verbs, that typically take additional verbs in the infinitive, are usually not reflexive.

For example, "ir" can be reflexive ("irse": to leave) but when it takes an infinitive ("ir a" + infinitive: going to ...) it is not reflexive. Thus, we know that the "me" in "me voy" (I leave) is related to "voy" but the "me" in "me voy a despedir" (I'm going to say good-bye) is related to the reflexive verb "despedir(se)".

clever, thanks for that.

so nos vamos a lavar means we are going to wash ourselves and not  were off to wash ie the nos must belong to the lavar?

I think that nos vamos a lavar is we're going to wash.

We are going to wash ourselves should be vamos a lavarnos.

Fabrizio donperigo

I am really think that nos vamos a lavar and vamos a lavarnos mean exactly the same thing.  And the nos does belong the lavar.  "lavarse"

fabrizio&donperigo: Oops, I guess I was wrong! Sorry!

The construction "irse a" + infinitive exists, I just never heard of it before.

Thus, I guess "nos vamos a lavar" is ambiguous. But I think without context it probably would be understood as "we are going to wash ourselves". And "nos vamos a lavar algo" would be understood as "we are off to wash something".

Nice, I learned a new phrase: "irse a" + infinitive - to be off to... . Sorry for the collateral damage!

stevestrv, you're right about the two sentences meaning the same, but I don't think that nos belongs to lavar in both cases: as martinillo said in his last post, the first case is irse a lavar, while the second case is ir a lavarse.

fabrizio martinillo deperigo

When a conjugated verb is followed by the infective, the pronoun could come after the infinitive or before the conjugated verb.  I am sure that you can use the verb lavarse and say  nos vamos a lavar or vamos a lavarnos to mean we are going to wash ourselves with the nos belonging to the lavarse.

fabrizio you have a interesting point with the verb irse.  I have to admit that nos vamos a lavar algo, using irse to say “we are off to wash something” is new to me.  But I can believe that in this case the nos would have to come before vamos.  And of the course nos belongs to irse.

What if you want to say “we are off to wash ourselves”,  using both irse and lavarse.  Would it be nos vamos a lavarnos?  I am assuming that nos nos vamos a lavar is not correct

nosnos, i wouldnt put anything past them :-)

steve, I think that you have to consider ir a lavar as it were a single block. You can make this block reflexive adding the reflexive particle either at the first or at the second verb of the block, but not at both. So irse a lavar is pretty much the same as ir a lavarse, but I think irse a lavarse isn't correct.

fabrizio

I that is a good point but it seems to me that the reflexive forms of the verbs have different meanings.  Ir – to go; irse - to leave; lavar – to wash something; lavarse – to wash oneself.  So it seems that the meaning of the block is different  if the se belongs to the ir or to the lavar.

Like I said earlier, I have never heard of using irse a lavar to mean “leaving to wash” or “off to wash”, but if this is a valid expression, if would have a different meaning then ir a lavarse – “going to wash oneself”

No dice bromitas en Chile, ellos dicen weveo.

Fabrizio  Donperigo  Martinillo

I asked a forma Spanish teacher, whom I consider a real expert on Spanish grammar, about using irse with other reflexive verbs like lavarse.  First Martinillo was correct about using irse to say I am off to do something.   Secondly, when you use irse with another reflexive verb, you have to use the reflexive pronoun twice.  Below, in red, are the words of my form teacher which I coped directly from an email he sent me.

Martinillo Thank you for teaching me a new phrase.

The thing about “irse” meaning “to be off to” is correct, and theoretically something like “me voy a cortarme el pelo” (a little more likely than “me voy a lavarme las manos”) would be fine.

Fabrizio  Donperigo  Martinillo

I asked a forma Spanish teacher, whom I consider a real expert on Spanish grammar, about using irse with other reflexive verbs like lavarse.  First Martinillo was correct about using irse to say I am off to do something.   Secondly, when you use irse with another reflexive verb, you have to use the reflexive pronoun twice.  Below, in red, are the words of my form teacher which I coped directly from an email he sent me.

Martinillo Thank you for teaching me a new phrase.

The thing about “irse” meaning “to be off to” is correct, and theoretically something like “me voy a cortarme el pelo” (a little more likely than “me voy a lavarme las manos”) would be fine.

Fabrizio  Donperigo  Martinillo

Hi guys

I asked that same Spanish teacher another question.  Below are my question and his response.

Question  - Can I please ask if "me voy a trabajar" - "I am off to work" can also be writen as "voy a trabajarme"

Answer - In violation of the normal rules, no. There are some times when the pronouns are movable and this is one. If you asked a native they might say theoretically it’s ok but it “sounds funny.”

Stevestrv,

one of the most amazing things about all this is that the dialogue in this lesson (which was published just 2 days after the question about "irse a" + infinitive came up here) starts with the phrase: "Me voy a hacer la compra"! That's good timing! :)

Fabrizio  Donperigo  Martinillo

The Spanish teacher I mention earlier sent me another email.  The text is below in red.  

“I went to the blog, interesting discussion. Tell them that they are discussing something linguists call “clitic climbing.” It’s been studied a lot for Spanish. Here is a good initial link to a source that makes pretty good sense for non-linguists: http://books.google.com/books?id=lULWOT1o0SsC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=clitic+climbing+SPanish&source=web&ots=MtS8YtDhhN&sig=dQDfivGZgSd1bpTGFLQVgIZ2Y6o&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPA109,M1”

Martinillo  Thanks for the link.  These lessons cover a lot of grammar and idioms.

Fabrizio  Donperigo  Martinillo

He juste sent me another email.  This is what he said.

"Also, clitics climb (move to the front) but they don’t go the other way. With “ir” + infinitive, if the reflexive is tied to “ir” then it has to go in front, if it is tied to the infinitive there is the option:

“I’m going to wash my hands” = Me voy a lavar las manos or Voy a lavarme las manos. (There is no verb “irse” involved here.)

“I’m off to study” = Me voy a estudiar, not Voy a estudiarme. (The verb “irse” is involved.)

Also,

“I’m off to meet to meet up with my friends” = Me voy a encontrarme con mis amigos."

Duplicate message.

Hi folks,

Ah, clitic climbing.  That takes me back to the days of X-bar theory... A technical explanation is that the "me" needs to be "higher" (i.e., before the verb) in order to be in the same scope domain as "voy."  I miss grad school.

Anyway, in layman's terms, the problem with "Voy a trabajarme" is that it sounds like "I'm going to work myself" instead of "I'm off to work."

sounds like  they could be self employed.

artists maybe?

;-p

Acabo de notar esta frase en la sección expansion:

No siento haberte hecho daño.

(I'm not sorry that I hurt you.)

Esta frase me encuentro graciosa.

Quién la diría una cosa así?  Incluso nuestro atracador de bancos, que habla a sus víctimas en forma de Ustedes no se la diría esa. 

 hubiera dicho: "Esta frase me encuentro graciosa" porque en este caso el verbo no es reflexivo.

otras correcciónes?..por favor, las agradecería :)

kikuyu, you can say:

- Encuentro graciosa esta frase.

- Esta frase la encuentro graciosa.

In this sentence, the subject is YO (omitted).

Gracias Esti!

¿Adónde fueron los "sound files" del ejercicio tercero?

penhuizc,

Check out this thread

This seemed to have something to do with compiled flash programs.  The short plain ones worked fine, just the compiled ones were messing up.  Back on Oct 28th they had  gotten 4 out of 6 to work and the new ones have the code problem fixed.

Thanks for bringing the old problem back to the surface. They still have all those old flash programs to recompile now that they know what the problem was.