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- "Tengo una lámpara más vieja …
"Tengo una lámpara más vieja que esa en mi casa."
Translation:I have a lamp that is older than that one at my house.
31 Comments
318
"that is more old than" has 9 google results and "that is older than" 32,400,000 results. While "more old" and "older" may have the same meaning the use of "more old" in sentence construction is going to be very rare and seem odd to most people. Anyway when you see "más" always think if a "er" or "est" word could be formed with it when translating Spanish.
I think "more old" is grammatically wrong too. When I learned English I was taught adjectives with 3 or more syllables use more+adjective and adjectives with 1 or 2 syllables use adjective+er.
Almost. Actually, 2 syllable words in English use more/most as well, with the exception of words that end in -y or -ow (plus a couple of unusual ones). More boring, more awkward, happier, mellower.
I didn't know that one. Thanks for sharing. Although you can use "awkwarder" as well. (See here http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/awkwarder)
No way! Wiki or not, it's "more awkward," never "awkwarder." I've never even heard anyone say it in error.
It seems like it's a "correct" but rarely to never used word (considering there are only 28200 google result). Maybe it's dated but nobody saw a reason to strike it out of the dictionary.
In english you don't actually say more old. It's old older oldest. More and most are only used with words with more than one syllable like awesome or amazing.
Many English speakers might use those interchangeably, but not all. That's a good example of translating the idea but not the words. On DL we are supposed to give as literal a translation as possible. When you get really good at it and are translating a casual conversation, that might be fine!
As of lately, the Real Academia Española (RAE) dictates that "ésa" as a pronoun should be spelled without an accent.
Hi Luis, thanks for clarifying. I looked on other sites (e.g. about.com) and the rules weren't clear.
Luis, pensaba que el acento era opcional, es decir, este y éste son correctos. ¿No?
Why is the "one" used. I think it generally understood in English, and I do not see it in the spanish sentence. Thanks for the help.
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My translation was (i have a very old lamp that is in my house) marked incorrect of course. But i think "i have a lamp that is older than that one at my house" is a clumsy sentence to begin with.
I just wonder when Duolingo will have a native English speaker do their translations?
