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- "The party already began."
"The party already began."
Translation:La fiesta ya empezó.
46 Comments
Empezo and comenzo.... They mean the same thing but is there a specific time when you should use empezo and a specific time when you should use comenzo or are they just interchangeable?
Those words translate literally to begin and commence, respectively. Just so you have an idea as to why they're interchangeable.
But in English they have different connotations (denotative meaning the same) - 'commence' is much more formal. If a friend said to another " the party has commenced", they would be mis-reading the occasion unless it was a very formal event or the speaker was being mildly ironic. Words of the same denotative meaning are not necessarily interchangeable. Is this the same for the Spanish equivalents? "Shall I commence to serve lunch", is incongruous in any informal everyday situation. It is like the difference between 'residence' and 'house'. I often feel the need to ask native Spanish speakers on DL about usage and context because meaning is not clear cut
The native Spanish speaker said he uses them interchangeably. It sounds like it doesn't have that formal connotation.
'ya empezó la fiesta' on the other hand is correct. I guess ya and the verb have to stick tgt
I'm not sure where to place "ya" in a sentence. Sometimes it is at the end, sometimes the beginning or, in this case, in the middle.
Don't worry you'll learn when you use it and you see the face on the native and then you ask them ¿Cómo debería decir eso? And then you'll learn from it and never look back (personal experience) lol
I'm spanish and I started this just for fun, and now this is telling me i'm wrong. Because I wrote "la fiesta ya había empezado" instead of "la fiesta ya empezó"
I think your translation may be due to differences between AmE and BrE. I am a native speaker of British English (BrE), and I cannot think when I would use the sentence 'The party already began'. I can say either, 'The party has already begun' or 'The party had already begun'. So if you have learned BrE, I completely understand why you translated the sentence as 'la fiesta ya había empezado' -- it was the first meaning that I thought of myself.
To me, the two sentences are 'one and the same'. In fact, it is more properly expressed as 'had begun', in normal English usage.
I keep accidentally typing empiezo and it says its worng, why doesn't it say its a typo
I guess because "empiezo" means "I begin", so the programme thinks your confusing the first person singular present tense of "empezar" (i.e. "empiezo") with the third person singular pretérito indefinido (i.e. "empezó")
Is there a specific reason that "Ya" is in the middle of the sentence here as opposed to being mostly at the beginning of sentences. (in my experience so far on DL)
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Adverb review here. http://www.spanishdict.com/topics/show/28
I also have difficulties with the 'YA' placement. Lately I just put it before the verb and it seems to work out.
I'm very confused about word order in reference to "ya". When I got it wrong it says "la fiesta empezó ya" and when I come to the discussion page it says the correct phrase is "la fiesta ya empezó" are both of those correct? I put "ya la fiesta empezó" because I didn't think the word order would be the same as the English translation. It sounded strange to me but then again I'm not a native or fluent speaker.
If I wanted to say, "It already started." in a situation where the context was clear would I just say, "Ya empezó." ?
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I'm not an expert, but is your "se" supposed to be a reflexive pronoun? If it is, then maybe "comenzó" cannot be used with a reflexive pronoun. Maybe a native Spanish speaker can shed some light here.
Yes you can, but that means that the party is starting, so for the traduction of this sentnce you can't. ( I'm spanish )
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I think perhaps the use of inició is for when the meaning calls for a pronoun like "se" so that the Spanish sentence is the equivalent of an English passive sentence. However, I don't know for sure if I'm on the right track with my reply.
Sorry, this is probably a stupid question. Do adverbs go in the same order as the English sentence, or is it like adjectives where they typically go after a verb?
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Through trial and error, one of the things I learned about Spanish is that when "no" is used as an adverb, it has to be in front of both the main verb and the helping verb. (For example, "Ellos no habían leyendo el libro" is correct, and "Ellos habían no leyendo el libro" is incorrect.) Maybe this is also true for other Spanish adverbs. If anyone knows more about this, please fee free to comment further.
Although both Spanish and English each have absolute rules about the placement of the adverb "no," this rule does not hold for all English adverbs. Specifically, some adverbs can come before or after the verb as long as they are as close as possible to some part of the verb phrase they are modifying. (With the verb phrase "has begun," for example, all of the following are correct and sound natural: "The party already has begun," "The party has already begun," and "The party has begun already.")
I think it is significant that if a present participle, such as "beginning," is used instead of a past participle, such as "begun," (which, unlike a present participle, can be used with a modal helping verb in either past or present tense), then the placement of the English adverb is much more restricted. (For example, "The party is already beginning" and "The party is beginning already" sound much more natural to a native speaker' than "The party already is beginning." Any native English speakers hearing the last sentence would understand perfectly what it meant. At the same time, they would think that whoever wrote or said it was NOT a native speaker, because native speakers don't put the adverb first when they modify the main verb phrases in passive voice sentences.)
For some idiosyncratic reason, the English language is very focused on time. Likewise, the Spanish language seems to be more focused on location. This is just how the languages evolved, and when translating, I try to remember this when I am deciding where to place the adverbs. Hope this helps. ;^)
Why can't the word feria be used here? It has been suggested in earlier lessons as interchangeable with fiesta.
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In English, the word "carnival" can mean either "fair" or "party." However, "party" and "fair" can sometimes have different shades of meaning or even completely different meanings in English. For instance, sometimes English speakers use "fair" when they are talking about an open air market where anyone can go and things are bought and sold. Used this way, a "fair" could be a "carnival" because fairs can have a carnival atmosphere.
Also, sometimes English speakers use "party' when they are talking about private parties at which attendance is by invitation only. Because carnivals are parties in the sense that they are exciting times of gaiety and frolicking, in that sense they are like large public parties to which any local person can come.
When the words "fair" and "party" are not used with their shared meaning of "carnival," they certainly don't mean the same thing. This is probably why duo doesn't accept them as synonyms. I think the program doesn't accept these translations so that we duo users can learn these distinctions.
I prefer the more 'natural' past perfect translation 'la fiesta ya habia empezado' to the preterite, in this instance, as I believe it conveys the intended meaning more accurately.
