"Sir, are you writing a book?"
Translation:Señor, ¿escribe usted un libro?
53 Comments
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The fact that the individual is addressed as 'Sir', implies that it is not a familiar relationship, so Usted is the correct usage, which uses 3rd person.
Surely the question was more about the conjugation of escribe?
(Think it's understood that usted is deployed because it is formal)
The two issues are one and the same.
Using usted dictates the use of escribe.
Yes, I don't think the other comment made that so clear. I hadn't thought that when speaking to people of authority would require changing the verb to its "he/she" form. Just in case the original comment doesn't quite understand the correlation between the "usted" and "escribe", the rules are:
leo - I read
lees - you read
lee - he/she/you (formal) reads
The light bulb next to each new set of lessons will inform you of rules you may need to learn as you go. It helped a lot when I discovered that!
(Edit: Daniel explained it well enough, just thought an example would help.)
Usted is the formal "you." The same conjugation is used for pronouns "he," and "she," as well as you.
I have written ' usted escribe un libro' and DL has said this is correct. What is the rule with word order?
I put escribiendo and it was wrong. When I tapped "writing" escribiendo was an option
Despite Tessa Jade's comment below, she is attributing context to a situation that lacks context. We have only the translation to work with. If the English asks for present continuous, the correct Spanish response should also require present continuous tense. This confuses people who are doing our best to learn difficult verb tensing. DUOLINGO NEEDS TO CORRECT THIS ERROR.
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Present tense (indicative) in Spanish means three things.
Yo hablo inglés: I speak English. I do speak English. I am speaking English.
Yo como pan: I eat bread. I do eat bread. I am eating bread.
Yo vivo en Buenos Aires: I live in Buenos Aires. I do live in Buenos Aires. I am living in Buenos Aires.
Indeed. The question, 'Sir, are you writing a book?' implies that it is an action occurring at the time the question is asked. It's difficult to think of a situation where this question would be asked for an activity which is not occurring at the moment.
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I'm writing a book. I've been working on it for six months.
That is not a continuous action but something I have been doing over a period of time.
Sir, are you writing a book?
Not necessarily continuous.
Usted/ustedes (singular/plural) always takes the ending for the 3rd person conjugation
señor, es usted ecribiendo un libro? = means literaly, Sir, are you writing a book? so why have they rejected it ??????
senor, estas escribieno un libro when translate it is same Sir, are you writing a book. Why it is wrong ?
You can't use tú forms with señor.
It would need to be: está escribiendo
Why is "Señor, ¿usted estas escribiendo un libro?" incorrect? Isn't it also equivalent to the sentence above?
Can someone clarify why add usted after escribe? I don't know the formal question adds usted after a verb, rather than before.
Like he said earlier, the use of 'Señor' implies the question is formal, 'usted' not tù.
So if the rule of 'the noun comes before the adjective', could I not put 'Senor, usted un libro escribe? (Or am I being dumb!!!)
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I don't see how adjective word order applies here, but while Señor, ¿usted un libro escribe? might be technically correct, it's really weird word order, like Sir, a book are you writing?.
"¿Señor, usted escribe un libro?"
"¿Señor, escribe usted un libro?" and
"¿Señor, escribe un libro usted?"
are all better translations.
You can't use estás with señor. You would need está, since señor requires usted forms.
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Why aren't we learning the gerund stuff?? What about the grammar rules etc?? Can someone look into this please?
Why isnt escribe recommended? It only has escrbir , which is "wrong" i find this happens a lot
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Duolingo, how is it possible that after five days, someone could have a score total of over 8000. What am I doing wrong?
Can the answer be "Señor, ¿escribe un libro?" Isn't the "you" implied? Is it needed/necessary for understanding the question? Thank you.
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I put señor, ¿escribe usted un libro? And it said i was wrong. It wanted señor, ¿usted redecte un libro? Wth
How wrong am i to say "Señor, Tú escribes un libro?" Is it because sentence starts with "Sir" in a formal sense, thus "usted" has to be used and automatically the verb form is "escribe" to make it Señor, ¿Escribe usted un libro?"
Nope. As discussed above, you can't use the familiar escribes with señor. You need the usted form.
The correct translation is: "Señor, está usted escribiendo un libro", yet it is marked as wrong. Learn how to conjugate verbs, Duolingo.
In English, we can use the present continuous tense to talk about activities that are on-going, but that we aren't necessarily doing at that moment. However, in Spanish, this is not the case. In Spanish the present continuous is reserved for whatever action you are completing in that precise moment. For example, in English, it would be common to say "I am working at the supermarket," to one of your friends when you are not actually on the clock. But, if you are speaking Spanish and you say, "Estoy trabajando en el supermercado," that would actually mean that you are on the clock working at that moment. Check out LightSpeedSpanish on youtube - they have some great videos explaining grammar concepts like this. Their videos are very succint and to the point - about 10 minutes each!
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Perhaps it's trying to teach you that, although the tenses look similar in the two languages, they really aren't.
