Spanish speakers from Spain they hardly pronounce the letter Z, Latin American people they pronounce it more like and S. LAPIS.

en frente de computadora.escribo las palablas

nuevo que no las sabo.

sabo? quizas quiera decir Sé

Yo uso prestar y si es una situación muy formal, uso "facilitar".

Genial, las variaciones son infinitas jej

I found your correction here very interesting:

"Ahora, se puede escribir, con fluidez, las palabras

que antes eran escribido escritas en piedra"

I have been reading up on the use of "the passive voice" using a great little book called "The Ultimate Spanish Verb Review and Practice". Chapter 15.

I was comfortable with expressions such as:

"Las puertas fueron abiertas"

The doors were opened [ doesn't say by whom, hence use of passive - the true passive in this case ].

It then went on to talk about something I hadn't known before:

"Las puertas ESTABAN ABIERTAS"

The doors were open

They said that using estar and the past participle focuses on the RESULT of the action

It also said that if we use "estar" that we cannot then use an agent phrase with "por" after it.

I'd recommend this book to anyone. I do one page a day and hope to finish the book in a year. It contains brief but good grammar notes and tons of exercises with all answers given [ no me gusta los libros que only have odd numbered answers !! ]

Cheers

Dave

do you mean interesting because lili didn't change the ser as well as my dodgy participle? i.e. do you prefer estar for the sentence in question? or is it that you prefer fueron to eran (i know i do)? 

 I cant honestly say i intended to exploit  the ambiguity between written, the past tense of writing and written, the completed action although  now you mention it i think it works better focussing on the action (ser).

Id intended a fluidly/with fluids pun (perhaps i should have used fluido) and this would resonate better with the action of writing

thanks for the interesting grammar tip, I shall endeavour to make use of it soon although too much clarity leaves less room for puns. :-(

Actually the reason I found it interesting [ which I forgot to put in ] was that I'd just been reading about the use of estar+past particple yesterday morning. I open up this lesson, and there it was !!

I've looked through a lot of grammar books regarding the passive voice, but this was the first time I had found anything about the use of estar.

Bye the way, your posts are always very interesting.

I cut and paste all the grammar comments into a word document each day, which I use as a study tool to refresh my memory.

Cheers

Dave

now theres a clever idea i wish id thought of that last year. if you could occasionally dump a copy in the grammar guide as a coment it would be hugely beneficial to future users. I keep meaning to trawl all the old conversations for illluminating grammar conversation but then i remind myself that there are people getting paid to do that sort of thing in shanghai.

thanks for the kind words, Im afraid I cant see your estar + past participle passive voice example anywhere though. perhaps your coincidence is an illusion :-)

A while ago, I came across two books that actually make it fun!! I would recommend them to all of us beginners.

The first one is called "Laugh 'n" Learn Spanish" by Lynn Johnston and Brenda Wegmann. This is a very clever book that uses cartoons from the famous "For Better or Worse" series. There are 80 cartoons, all in Spanish. Translations are provided for each. The grammar starts off with the simple present tense and gradually and gently goes all the way up to the imperfect subjunctive. It has really helped me "enjoy" [ for want of a better word ] spanish grammar. The book is very cheap and can be obtained from Amazon etc very cheaply.

The next one is my favorite:

"Correct Your Spanish Blunders" [ I have to correct mine all day !! ]. This is a compact little book that gives common grammatical corrections for everything from articles to prepositions. Well worth having.

I can speak a little Spanish, but my grammar has always been very poor. Over the last few months, by using these books, it has slowly been improving.

Cheers

Dave

Dave

Did a bit of research and found this explanation in a book [ "Laugh 'n' Learn Spanish p.150 ]:

"En el lavaplatos ... in the dishwasher.....these words are usually masculine since el aparato [ the apparatus] is understood "

Don't know if that's the correct reason, but it sounds fair enough.

Cheers

Dave