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- "¿Tu madre te compra la ropa?"
67 Comments
1041
Agree. DL accepts "Does your mother buy your clothes?" and that translation both clears up the kid-wearing-ragged-clothes ambiguity and makes the insult (at least in the US) more apparent.
1212
¿Tu madre te compra la ropa? = Does your mom buy your clothes? (she pretty much buys all your clothes)
¿Tu madre te compra ropa? = Does your mom buy you clothes? (occasionally)
Duo's sentence translates to Does your mother buy your clothes?
We sometimes use [indirect object pronoun] + [article] with possessions, just like we do with parts of the body:
- Te veo la cabeza → I see your head (lit. "I see you the head")
- Te compro ropa → I buy you clothes
- Te compro la ropa → I buy your clothes (lit. "I buy you the clothes")
Without the article, it's more like for [someone] rather than [someone]'s:
- ¿Tu madre te compra la ropa?
"Does your mother buy your clothing?"- ¿Tu madre te compra ropa?
"Does your mother buy you clothing?"
Good question! I'm guessing - but this is just a guess - that it can be interpreted both ways, and in conversation one could infer the meaning from context, intonation, and emphasis. Reading this as a standalone sentence, and without hearing how it is said, makes it very difficult to be certain of the nuances.
430
Jeff your question highlights this anomally. What is the point of Duo teaching us that madre means mother and mama means mom if they are both accepted with no distinction between the two.
"Comprar" is the infinitive "to buy".
"Compra" is the 3rd person singular "he/she/it buys".
https://www.123teachme.com/spanish_verb_conjugation/comprar
111
"te compras" does not appear in the sentence. I think that would mean "you buy yourself" or "you are buying yourself" as in "te compras un vestido" (You are buying yourself a dress).
Yes. In Spanish, the object pronoun (direct and indirect) must come before the verb.
Yo te amo = I love you (direct object--who is loved?)
Tu madre te compra la ropa = Your mother buys you clothes (indirect object--who were the clothes bought for?)
However, "te compras" is "you buy yourself". Pay attention to the verb conjugation.
No. "Tu madre te compra" is literally "your mother buys (for) you".
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/26408018?comment_id=36473360
Actually, Tierene's translation is better than Duolingo's.
In Spanish, you can have a direct object and use the indirect object to indicate the possessor, especially with parts of the body: Ella me lavó el pelo (She washed my hair), but it also works in other situations, like this one.
So this sentence can be translated as: Does your mother buy the clothes for you? or Does your mother buy your clothes?
If you want to say Does your mother buy you [some] clothes?, then you would say ¿Tu madre te compra ropa? (no la there).
The conjugation of a verb depends on the subject of the verb; that is, the person performing the action.
With comprar here, the person doing the action (buying the clothes) is "tu madre"/"your mother", not "tú"/"you". So we need the 3rd person "she buys" conjugation (which is "[ella] compra"), not the 2nd person "you buy" conjugation ("[tú] compras").
1041
ocu, sometimes if you have a typo you'll see it as correct--time after time. If you will copy and paste your answer into your post, someone in the discussion may be able to help you spot what Duo didn't like.
430
That is using past tense. Did your mother buy you clothes would be Tu madre te compró la ropa.