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- Topic: Spanish >
- "Ves los mercados."
34 Comments
1855
Because this sentence of DL is so weird. Markets can't be seen, they are virtual. I am in doubt if ever a human will say this.
1326
Yes, this is a sentence no one would ever see, I'm not sure why Duo concentrates on so many sentences that no one would ever use, but skips sentences that everyone uses every day!
elleisa, here is a helpful answer to a similar question I asked about a different sentence:
When to use articles with abstract ideas From rspreng:
From what I have been able to glean: Abstract ideas used as subjects get articles (La vida es dura, Life is hard.), but as objects they often don't unless modified: He is giving wonderful hope = la esperanza maravillosa, but only esperanza if not modified.
I'm a little confused here, ( so I'm probably wrong ). I tried "you see markets" and was rejected. I had been thinking of "markets" in the abstract sense like "commodities markets" "futures markets" etc.. Since romance languages like to have articles for abstract concepts, I thought maybe "los mercados" could mean "markets" in the abstract sense. It turns out this is not the case. So, mercados can only mean a physical store? Or the various more abstract financial markets are not consider an abstract noun in Spanish? Sorry for the confusion. For what it's worth, Google translate also thinks that "los mercados" translates simply to "markets".
I do not normally hear people say "markets" without the article in English, in both the physical and abstract senses of the word. I watch the commodities markets, the markets are now closed, I go to the market for bread.
In other news, markets plummeted today after the lackluster employment report... I guess that works, but it is usually more specific.
If you said, "I watch markets." I would think you didn't actually, or you were a non-native speaker.
That is backwards "tú ves" is informal or familiar form and "usted ve" or "ustedes ven" are formal (although in much of South America "usted" is used for both formal and informal). http://spanish.about.com/od/pronouns/a/you.htm
I answered this in the singular "I see the market" thinking it was one of those cases where Spanish uses a plural where English would use a singular like "vacaciones." Is that wrong? Maybe it's just me, but in English using "markets" in the plural in this context seems awkward. My intuition is that if they are close enough together that you can see them all, then it is just one big market.