Comments on: Today’s Spanish Lesson, and Inquiry

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:54:44 +0000

Thanks for all the comments about the extraneous articles. I noticed that and fixed it shortly after posting.

By: John Doe

John Doe — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:08:32 +0000

I’m a native spanish speaker and would like to note that what you are saying is not correct. You don’t say “Presten LA atención…”, it’s wrong, that is like saying “Pay THE attention…”. Also “Pongan atención…” is widely used and not incorrect.

By: Juank Prada

Juank Prada — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:30:10 +0000

“Ésto es muy importante. Pongan la atención por favor.” Actually the correct way to say this is “Ésto es muy importante. Pongan atención por favor” we never use the “defined arcticle” ‘la’ (not sure if its the correct translation for that) in this kind of sentences. Not sure why but i can only think of your example as an exception to the rule as with some other sentences using ‘la’ is ok.
For example:
‘Pongan -la- mantequilla sobre la mesa’.

By: Hare

Hare — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:05:48 +0000

Well, in the Spanish spoken in Spain, this would be:

Presten atención al maestro cuando les habla.

The article “la” is not needed in this case, and the pronoun “él” is redundant, as “habla” is always 3rd person singular.

Regards

By: natxo asenjo

natxo asenjo — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:03:03 +0000

Maybe it’s a thing from Spain (so not from Latin America), but in Spain we would say ‘Presten atención al maestro …’ , so no article before ‘atención’.

For the rest, yes, false friends can be really funny when literally translating stuff from one language to the other. A few years ago a couple of Spanish journalist wrote a really funny book called ‘From lost to the river’. You can read some examples of what we understand by that in this blog: http://blogs.gnome.org/rodrigo/2006/10/04/from-lost-to-the-river/

By: aristo

aristo — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:48:01 +0000

“Pongan la atención” (Wrong) “Pongan atención” (Correct)
“Presten la atención” (Wrong) “Presten atención” (Correct)

El artículo “la” está de más, “Pay attention [to me]” is “Prestenme atención, por favor”.

Greetings from Venezuela

By: izaera

izaera — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:37:55 +0000

Hi from Spain:

I agree with all you said, but in Spain we don’t use the article: “la”. We just say “prestar atencion” o “poner atencion”. So, we would say:

-Ésto es muy importante. Pongan atención por favor.
-Ésto es muy importante. Presten atención por favor.

I don’t know if the use “la” in any of the countries in South America, but I believe they don’t either.