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- "¿Duermes bastante?"
169 Comments
IG88, normally it should mean a lot, take into consideration that sometimes having a lot is having enough, for example if I'm going on a trip for a weekend and say "Tengo bastante ropa para el fin de semana." when I say that I have "bastante" what I really mean is that I have enough to spend the weekend, so it really depends on how you use it.
I never said that it always means enough, I said sometimes. The Spanish word has both meanings, if I want to say that I have just enough I use "suficiente" so when I say I have "bastante" of something I usually mean that I am estimating that I have a good amount of it and it should suffice, it should be enough, so sometimes having more than it is needed is having enough. That is my view at least, and of course that ambiguity doesn't happen in English since "enough" and "a lot" are very different terms.
I thought bastante meant enough or 'quite a... ' e.g. 'quite a lot'. Whilst the word may or may not mean both 'a lot' and 'enough' in Spanish, the concepts are totally distinct which is why it's weird to have one word mean both. Having 'a lot' of something is not the same as having 'enough'. "Do you sleep a lot" for example is a totally different question to "do you sleep enough". I can't imagine using 'bastante' in this question to mean 'a lot' as opposed to using 'mucho' for example.
To me the translation "do you sleep a lot?" sounds more correct than "do you sleep enough?". As I said above, if I wanted to ask you if you sleep precisely enough I would use "suficiente". Despite the actual meaning of the word, "bastante" always has that sense of a little over enough. It could also have these meanings:
Suficiente o no poco.
- De tu casa a la mía hay bastantes kilómetros. (no poco, muchos)
- Ya somos bastantes, que no vengan más personas. (suficiente)
En una cantidad indefinida, pero suficiente.
- No ha nevado bastante (lo suficiente) para poder ir a esquiar.
- Me gusta bastante (quite a bit), pero no tanto como para comprarlo.
Más de lo necesario o de lo normal.
- No voy a cenar porque he comido bastante hoy. (a lot)
Antepuesto a un adverbio, muy.
- No puedes ir andando porque está bastante (muy) lejos.
I hope this helps more than my previous explanations because I don't think I can explain it any better.
I'm still not convinced. So for the benefit of everyone still confused by the meanings I'll leave this excerpt [http://i.imgur.com/twxD7DB.jpg] from this fantastic book:
If four different explanations, an excerpt from a book, and the word of a native speaker won't do I don't know what would.
Well that book just explained it perfectly: 'bastante' doesn't bloody well mean 'enough'!! haha! Why does every course teach that it does then?! Not only is it not used to mean enough (literally) in everyday speech, it doesn't even actually mean that! Why don't people just teach 'suficiente' for 'enough'?! Well that's all cleared up now, thanks for the link!
I think that bastante is always more like rather a lot more than simply a lot when it does imply more than just enough. Duermo bastante may mean more than just enough, but it is less than much. It is like saying I get a fair amount of sleep or I sleep rather a lot. It always has a slight degree of qualification. That makes it difficult to learn by any method, but especially with limited context.
"Enough! What are you doing in my house?"- (Shrek, 2001) Shrek, to the Three Blind Mic who invaded his home and harassed him. He doesn't like people to begin with, so biting the inside of his ears, and lobbing food in his face would be "too much" A perfect example where 'enough' can indicate that someone has reached a comfortable limit of anything.
It may seem odd, but I guess that's just how Spanish is. I think it is extremely important to think like a Spanish speaker when speaking Spanish. Trying to use concepts found in English to make sense of Spanish does not always work. Sometimes we need to adopt new concepts in order to properly speak and understand a foreign language. This is why small children learn new languages so easily. Their minds are completely open to new ideas. Look at how bastante is used in everyday settings and try to understand what the word means from the point of view of native speakers.
Pretty is sort of a vague word in English. Different people seem to use the word with a variety of meaning ranging from almost (pretty sure) to quite or considerably (pretty tired) passing reasonably somewhere in the middle. . Assuming you meant the considerable end of the continuum, though, yes it does. Although bastante does also seems to have its own continuum. But that meaning does not work here. This bastante is adverb modifying duermes. When bastante is used to mean pretty it is also an adverb, but it requires an adjective or another adverb to modify. ¿Duermes bastante bien? Do you sleep pretty well? Él es bastante joven. He is quite young.
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Yep, we would definitely say this in Hiberno-English and British-English, except that it would be "Sleep much?", to mean "Did you sleep much [sic. enough]/ get enough sleep?".
I appreciate your observation, and would like to understand your vantage point. Do you say this as a native speaker of Spanish? That would help me to understand your grasp of the nuance of verb tenses.
Verb tenses are elaborate in both Spanish and English. While my translation uses the present progressive tense in English, this often translates to the simple present tense in Spanish - as it would here in my example.
Hence, I do not understand the relevance of your comment.
"Are you sleeping enough"? is short term i.e. 'recently'. For example, someone might be going through a difficult time so you would ask "are you sleeping enough"? or "are you getting enough sleep"? The translation here of "do you sleep a lot"? is just general i.e. "typically, do you sleep a lot"? "Do you spend a lot of time sleeping"? (generally). Hope that helps.
Are you sleeping enough has a different use/meaning. Some of my Indian friends (i.e. from India!) use 'are you' instead of 'do you' when it's not needed and 'it does change the meaning' (as opposed to 'it is changing the meaning').
I think it's like the difference between estuvo and fue in general. When you say 'are you', you are asking if someone is 'literally' DOING the action. Whereas if I asked 'do you sleep a lot'? then I'm not specifically talking about any particular day or time frame, just 'typically'. 'Are you' is active whereas 'do you' is passive.
I am confused. You resist "do" but are happy to put in "did"....??? Did is past tense and you correctly say duermes is you sleep i.e. present tense. You are incorrect though - duermes also means "you do sleep" (and, the the way, "you are sleeping" unless one wants to say sleeping at exactly this moment, so for example "you are sleeping every day at present" would use duermes). Maybe not used often like that in English but essential for negation (I do not sleep) and as here questions - do you sleep? Did plays exactly same role but in the past. Hope this helps.
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What about mucho, un montón, muchísimo, menudo, bastante, demasiado, montones, un lote con frecuencia, mejor, un poco, la mayoría, seguido, peor, parece etc.
These all mean 'a lot'
This may a colloquial thing, but everytime I use 'bastante' to mean 'enough' in Latin America I get quizzical looks and nobody understands me. suficiente is the right word. It took me awhile to unlearn this. Outside of duolingo, I've only seen bastante in writing and then it was a modifier to an adjective 'rather' or 'quite': él es un bastante buen actor. or he's a rather/quite good actor. For those in Latin American, this lesson is just plain wrong.
Forget you, 'stop the clutter' sign! I want to say that for weeks I've been asking my bathroom remodeler, Santos, "Tienes bastante dinero?" when he'd announce he had to go to Home Depot for supplies. He knows I'll give him more if he is low on cash. I THOUGHT I was asking: 'do you have enough money?" Now I find out I've been asking, "Do you have a LOT of money?" Does 'bastante' mean 'enough' in ANY Spanish-speaking country? Santo is from El Salvador--I'll ask him tomorrow what 'bastante' means to him...
I actually think a Swedish perspective might help to end some confusion here. In Swedish, we have the similar root-word "bastant", which translated means: "substantial, solid; stout; good, sound." It's a word which primarily deals with quality and/or thickness, rather than amount.
So in English, I'm guessing a better translation might be: "Do you get solid enough sleep?"; or "Do you sleep soundly?"
Just my two cents...
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Please get rid of a lot and make it enough. English uses enough not a lot. A lot is not used like that in the US. You are lessening your product. You have enough complaints to make a change some how.
I'd like to know the difference between "bastante" and "sufficiente". According to Spanish dict, it says that sufficient is saying "enough" or sufficient. "bastante" is used to say more than enough or even a plethora of something. Is this true? Here the link I saw this on. Fluent and natives please help! Thank you in advance.
http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/123248/do-suficiente-and-bastante-always-have-the-same-meaning
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In venezuela, colombia and near countries you can say....
¿Duermes mucho? or ¿Tu duermes bastante?
both sentences are correct and the people can understand you.. frequently is used ¿duermes mucho?
(I sorry for my english)
No. Well speaks to the quality of sleep. Bastante is somewhat hard to translate without context clues. It comes from the verb bastar which means to be enough or suffice. So one correct translation would be Do you sleep enough. But when modifying some nouns it can be like mucho and may be translated as quite but more often is can mean fairly or pretty. Bastante bien is generally translated as fairly well. If you read the definitions and examples on Spanishdict.com you should get the feel. But note that many of examples are pulled from the web and sometimes are off either in usage (like a proper name that is a word) or the highlighting is wrong. But most work.
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This is kind of a loaded question for people with sleep issues. That being said, I guess it is relevant to my life.
Omitting the subject pronoun in Spanish is routine, whether tú or another pronoun. And any question or statement can be a complete grammatical sentence without a pronoun in Spanish, but the only grammatically correct English structure that does not include the pronoun is the Imperative. It is true that in modern colloquial spoken English people do ask questions omitting the subject pronouns. I do it myself. But that is generally for more routine or common questions like Sleep well? Or Feel better? But that also is not the major way I ask those questions and they also tend to be asked in a more informal situation than simply that I address them by their first name.
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This question is more fore the latin americans. Would it be more normal to say duermes mucho?