Intermediate - So what?

Pregunta del día... ¿Cuál es el tema al que siempre respondes "¿Y a mí, qué?"? No no soporto que le gente me hable de Paris Hilton. No me imoprta ni un cominio lo que dice esa señorita.

Selo digo a los que me reportan el tiempo y el clima en Nueva York porque de (desde?) aquí no quiero pensar en allá :) Y esa Paris Hilton me hace decir esa frase. ¡Guácala!

¡Eek, corrijan el cuadro, por favor! Debe decir 'qué', no 'que'.

¡Hola! Dos preguntas: Cuál es la diferencia entre "qué" y "que"? ¿ "¿Y a mí, qué?" es una abreviación de una frase mas larga? En Italia nos decimos "E a me che me ne importa?" y la primera parte es la misma que "¿Y a mí, qué?".

Fabrizio No hay diferencia, cuando se usa "que" en una pregunta lleva un acento. Introduce oraciones interrogativas y exclamativas,preguntando, o expresando intensidad.

Hola, En el formato PDF la palabra 'que' no tiene un acento en la frase 'a mi que más me da....'. ¿Un acento es necesario or no?

iskndarbey and mharbus Thanks for the help and the corrections.

Hola otra vez: 1. I need some help in understanding the use of 'tomar a mal'. In the phrase 'don't take it the wrong way' (no me lo tomes a mal', 'me lo' is used. But in the expansion section, you use 'te lo' in the sentence 'No te lo tomes a mal'.(Don't get offended by it.) I need help in understanding the use of 'te' vs 'me' in these two expresssions. 2.In the expansion section the sentence 'Don't be in a bad mood with me' is translated into spanish as 'No estés a malas conmigo'. Why 'estés a malas' and not 'estés de malas'? 3.In the expansion section under empezar the sentence 'Are you starting to worry?' is translated into spanish as '¿Empezó a preocuparse?' ¿Es un error, sí?

Una pregunta sobre el orden de las palabras. Cuando decimos "ella compro una casa nueva ", eso significa que la casa es nueva solo para ella y no necesariamente nueva en general? Pero si decimos "una nueva casa" es decir que la casa ha sido construida hace muy poco tiempo, si? (Tambien puede significar que ella siempre compra muchas casas y esta es solo una de ellas?) mharbus, in your first question I think it's about the "direction" of thinking. "no me lo tomes a mal" - don't take whatever say/do the wrong way. Don't think that meant something bad. "no te lo tomes a mal" - don't YOU think that I meant something bad. I don't know if it's any help, I think it's something you have to get the feel of... I'm sure someone from the SP team will make that clearer.

hmmm? Sorry, have NO IDEA what's up with the letters in my last post and how did I do it...

hola spanish pod: el audio buton no funciona en la seccion del dialogo.

Tienes razon kikuyu. Hay sonido solamente en la ulitima frase del dialogo. Tampoco no hay sonido en muchas frases del expansion.

Necesito ayuda, por favor. Al principio de la lección, Lili dice "están dos personas ___________ hablar." Creo que ella dice "están dos personas ella quiere hablar," pero me parece que hay algo antes de "ella," y quizás Lili no dice "ella" tampoco. ¿Qué palabras deben estar en el espacio en blanco? (And in my last sentence, shouldn't "qué" agree in number with "palabras"?)

por Liliana: Muchas gracias, ahora esta claro. por oolung: parece que tu has miso "I" entre < and >.

Quería decir "entre < y >"...

oh i get it now, the scooby doos :-) Is that really what we sound like to the latin ear? should one always be striving for a flat unemotional delivery . is expression always in the language rather than the presentation, & body language? e.g. if i were to say "y a me que" id be going for the scooby snack every time, waving arms, facial expression etc.because i would be thinking that if the language failed, the "emphasis "would get the message across. does this just mark one out as a foreigner?

mharbus, The difference between "no me lo tomes a mal" and "no te lo tomes a mal" is tough to explain, because in Standard English there's no equivalent. The expression is "tomar a mal" to take the wrong way or to get offended. Throwing in an indirect object pronoun like "te" and "me" identifies an indirect object; the beneficiary of the action. This is what oolung means by 'direction.' I'll try to get close to the meaning using non-standard English: No me lo tomes a mal. "Don't get all offended on me. This sentence is trying to express that your action of getting offended is somehow affecting me. Compare "Don't go all mushy on me now." The te in "No te lo tomes a mal" is a different story. Sometimes in colloquial Spanish, you use a reflexive construction to imply that an action happens surprisingly quickly. For example:

• Comí toda una pizza (I ate a whole pizza)
• Me comí toda una pizza (I scarfed down a whole pizza).

So in the sentence "no te lo tomes a mal," perhaps the speaker is commenting on the surprising speed aspect of the action. That's my best guess; this one is actually pretty hard to pin down. For learning purposes, I would say don't worry about it!

Cyberdiva En el podcast dije lo siguiente: "están dos personas y ella quiere hablar." Dime si tienes mas preguntas. saludos

kikuyu and luisita, Thanks for the tip about the audio problem, we are all over it! don perigo, the scoobydoo intonation, and American intonation in general can be understood (especially by Mexicans), but is generally not the way to create emphasis in languages that are not English. Often, people who are in an immersion context will use their native language's intonation patterns in the target language as a communication strategy. The only problem is that many times, the target language speakers don't share that association. So if I take my American intonation patterns and use them when I speak Spanish, my friends will probably chuckle and say that I sound so American. If I use American intonation patterns in French, my friends will ask why I'm talking so emphatically... I imagine a William Shattner effect. If I use American intonation patterns in Chinese, the only people who will understand my words are other Americans. If you speak Chinese with the wrong tones, you might as well be handing people a word scramble puzzle. So my advice? Chuck your American intonation, and learn target language intonation. What I usually do is secretly choose one person to emulate, and listen hard to that person. Don't do it so much that you're doing an impression (that would be creepy), but just enough to try to get the patterns down.

Muchas gracias, Liliana. Cuando veo las palabras, puedo oirlas mejor. Puedo distinguir donde una palabra termina y otra palabra comienza.

cyberdiva, Knowing when one word ends and other begins just comes with practice! :)

JP, I'm sure you're right, but I find that for me, at least, that process is helped considerably by my being able to see what I'm hearing.

cyberdiva, Tienes razón, la versión escrita es muy útil para mejor comprender. : )

gracias jp y oolong!!!

thanks, Fabrizio, I figured that out afterwards... All I wanted to do was to emphasize the "I"... now I'll know never to use the wrong brackets :) And thanks, JP, for explaining it much more clearly than I had done. No one has answered MY question, though... and I'm so often at a loss when it comes to the noun-adjective word order! :)

oolung, if you want you can write &lt; to obtain < and &gt; to obtain >, but sure there are comfier ways to emphasize... :-)

I'm sure there are :-) (When it comes to computers, I really, REALLY suck. But one lives and learns, so maybe someday I'll not suck so much, hehe!)

I'm just using this space to see whether I can indicate stress by using slightly more intuitive coding than that suggested by fabrizio. Putting something in bold or italics can indicate stress, but I don't know whether the usual web codes apply here. Hence, this test message.

Aha! The web code for making something bold works, but the web code for italics puts the word in RED italics! Anyway, for those who want to know, what I wrote to make a word appear in boldface was to put a pointed bracket (a "less than" sign in math: <: ) followed immediately by the letter b (for bold) followed by a pointed bracket in the other direction (a "greater than" sign: > ). That indicates the start of something in bold. You then write whatever you want to be in bold, and follow it by repeating the stuff I just said, except that you add a / before the b: </b> . Hmmm....I wonder whether this will come out the way I hope. :-)

OK, it works, except please ignore the colon immediately following the first "less than" sign above. So if I want to write "SpanishPod" in bold, I'd write it this way: <b>SpanishPod</b> and what would appear in the discussion is SpanishPod. To get italics, you'd do the same thing, except use an i instead of a b. But on this forum, apparently you'd not only get italics, you'd get bold red italics!

cuando estoy muy concentrada en el estudio de mi español y mi compañero viene en el quarto y comienza a hablar acerca de los resultados del torneo de golf, me pienso a mi misma: “ y a mi qué, qué mas me da” pero ni lo diría. es solo que estoy preocupada

Thanks for the reply JP I genuinely hadn`t realised that. "william shatner" perfect example :-)

Cuando estoy preocupada por algo serio, y alguien viene y empieza a contarme tonterías, pongo cara de tener pocos amigos y contesto: ¡y a mí qué!, o ¡y a mí qué me importa! Incluso en un contexto más informal y con amigos suelo decir: ¡no me cuentes tu vida! (que es un poco "rude").

Cuando me cuentan de la vida de Britney Spears digo "Y a mí qué"....lol

estibalitz, "pongo cara de tener pocos amigos"= "dirty look" en ingles? yo puedo imaginar la cara que tu refieres.

oolung, To answer your adjective order question, the standard order is the adjective follows the noun it modifies. So "una casa nueva" would be a new house. New bricks, new floors, new paint, etc. Some adjectives have a second meaning, and to express that second meaning, we put the adjective before the verb. For example, "una nueva casa" would be a new house, maybe not new construction, but new to the new owner. Here's some more: mi profesor viejo my elderly teacher mi viejo profesor my former teacher una mujer grande a tall woman una gran mujer a great woman la nieve blanca the snow that happens to be white (as opposed to another color) la blanca nieve the pure white snow Acutually, I think people prefer to say "la blanca nieve" in most cases. Only if your in a context where there are different colors of snow (green, blue, black) and you only want to specify the white snow would you say "la nieve blanca."

J.P., I understand that preocupado means to be worried or concerned about something. Can it also mean "engrossed" as it does in english? That is the meaning that I was trying to convey in my first entry in this discussion. Thanks

Gracias, JP! I think I'm getting the hang of it now! cyberdiva, thanks for the tip, I'll definitely use that way to emphasize things :)

Entrenadores de deportes que no estudiaran fisiología del ejercício, hablan tonterías y piensan que están ablando bonito. És lastimable.

kikuyu, yes, you did a great guess!

Si se quiere decir, "Whatever you say (a mi)", ?se diría: "Lo que me digas"? (In English: If one wanted to say: Whatever you say (To me), would one say: "Lo que me digas"?) (Sorry if my grammar is crap, please correct any mistakes)

smotis That is correct you say "lo que me digas".

Hello ALL, I am new to learning spanish and this site. I have a question about the "Whatever you say to me".. is that the same as WHATEVER ( as the valley girl might say it ) or just whatever you might say to me.. Is there a " wish list-suggestion box" for the site. thanks and thanks for such a wonderful resource.. david

Hola David y bienvenido ! "Whatever" is not as the valley girl would say it, it is just whatever. If you have any suggestions just write to spanishpod@gmail.com

Thanks for the repsonse... Is there a Spanish "WHATEVER" to express the meaning as the "ValleyGirl" or typical teenage might mean it?

never mind.. just saw todays lesson...:))

"Whatever" is not as the valley girl would say it, it is just whatever. If you have any suggestions just write to spanishpod@gmail.com

JP it sounded like you were separating the Y in “Y a mi que” with it sounding like the Spanish y for and, while Liliana combined the Y and “a” to make “so what” sound like Ya mi que.