Comments on: It's expensive!

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Salut suz333,

You're right, ça coûte cher être poète would be a good tranlsation in French; the point being that being a poet is not all fun and games.

Gloria Fuertes published Sale caro ser poeta in 1969.

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corrections to PDF

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Mi renta es de..... Please explain the de constrution, and other examples.

Also the pronunciation of the e sound in de sounds strange, almost American.... dee

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Cdowis

The construction “Mi renta es de mil dólares” is new to me as well but it seems that “de” can me somthing like “that cost”. Check out Wordreference, you will find the sentence below there toward the bottom of the page.

“15 (precio) for
un pantalón de dos mil pesetas, a pair of trousers costing two thousand “

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Hmm, hadn´t thought about that much.

so in usage #15 "de" approximates @ "at"

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Cdowis and Cobre
I’m sorry, I should have listened to the podcast before answering the question from Cdowis. JP did say that “de” roughly means “at”. Although I think that the uses of “de” to mean “cost” is interesting as well.

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It is not surprising to find de following a noun, but in this case it follows a verb. It appears to be used in the sense of a characteristic (made of wood -- the rent is made of xxx dollars).

Does this make sense here? Can de only follow the verb ser?

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cdowis

god no, its very common to see de follow a verb and you should keep an eye out for which prepositions are found with which verbs De can double as "of" as in "about" or of as in made of e.g. you can indeed say

esta hecho de madera - its made of wood
que piensas de esto - what do you think of this?
estaban hablando de mi - they were talking of/about me
has oido de ella have you heard of/about her

it can often appear redundant as in
acabo de leer ... i just finished reading or
me alegro de que.... im happy that..or
me di cuenta de que.... i realized that

then as you mentioned, it works with nouns

los estados unidos de america and adjectives
"es lleno de estrellas"

hope this helps

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Hola, no me parece el ejercicio tres posible, ¿ no tendria faltas en el enunciado ?

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¡Todo es caro! Por ejemplo...El precio de los videojuegos nuevos es muy caro. Eso es porque sólo compro videojuegos más viejos.

As for what Norwegians can and can't discuss...that entirely depends on what kind of person you are, and what your family and friends are like. I do get the feeling that asking about salary is kind of rude, but I do it anyway, as I don't see any reason to hide such a thing. But I do tend to avoid discussing politics, because there's always the danger that I end up being disappointed at the other person. Day to day behaviour and political views can be completely different from my experience, it's kind of crazy.