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- Topic: Spanish >
- "Ese hombre está loco."
56 Comments
Because this sentence uses "estoy", would it be meaning that the man is temporarily crazy, ie. he is temporarily having mental issues? And could you use "ser" to mean that he is just permanently crazy?
Estar loco may imply irrational, hectic, unstable, etc. ("Things are so crazy right now"), ser loco would imply actual mental instability.
I knew it wasn't right, but it sounds like she's saying 'estan' or 'es tan'
That is what it sounded like to me, too. Wouldn't that just mean "that man is so crazy"?
Why is "that is a crazy man" an acceptable (and even necessary) answer here? "That man is crazy" and "that is a crazy man" may be used in most circumstances meaning the same thing, but they're not the same grammatically, and the emphasis is a slightly different one.
I think that there are two competing schools of thought among Duo users and Duo is often swamped with people wanting them to accept answers that could even possibly mean the same. I tend to the opposite side. I translations should reflect the structure presented as long as that structure is appropriate and comfortable in the target language. I say comfortable because one exception to mirroring structure for me is placing Never in the beginning of the sentence. While it "works" it misses the point that Nunca is placed differently in a sentence from never in common usage. It is a small point but I for one am more interested in knowing where I am probably going astray than where I might possibly have been right.
Using a form of ser would absolutely work, but would have a slightly different meanin.
Estar loco would refer to someones "craziness" as being a temporary condition - currently acting irrational, currently acting oddly, etc.
Ser loco would refer to a permanent character trait of someone and would probably refer to some actual mental instability.
You can look at some of the different uses here:
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That man is so crazy seems like a strong possibility here to me as well as what Duolingo accepts.. Ser implies a characteristic of long standing which is consistent with 'ese hombre es tan loco' ...?
Sounds like 'es tan' to me as well, but written you can see it's actually meant to be 'está'
You see, you allowed 'mad' this time, and on a previous occasion, but not last time. Please be consistent!
I don't think that I have ever used the word crazy. I would say mad. I always think of crazy as an American expression. I would use the word 'crackers'. Barmy, perhaps. Or when referring to a person's attributes 'off his trolley'. Potty, even!
Yes as mentioned above, "crazy" is the what is more commonly used in American English, both basically express the same idea.
Mad is an old word for crazy. Most people use it to mean angry. I suspect it evolved from the phrase, "mad with anger" and it was shortened to just mad. 99% of the time, mad means angry now.
Ahah, when I was studying English at school, they taught me "mad", and not "crazy".
It's still good to know. In Alice in Wonderland (written in 1865) there was a mad hatter. A man crazy from mercury poisoning from making hats. Mad hatter was a common phrase then.
The phrase has to be explained to children, who generally don't know that mad means crazy, after a short lifetime of say, 7-10 years of speaking English.
"Mad" and "Crazy" can be used in the same context, however, (in British English at least) "mad" can be used to say "angry" as well.
Yes. In American English mad is used for angry much more commonly. In fact I think of mad meaning crazy as being every so slightly British, although it's certainly not unusual in the US. But there are so many words for crazy, especially if you are going beyond the clinical definition of insane.
I have the same problem. We'll actually I tend to consistently reverse them. I think I want that to have a t because it ends with one on English. So I just remember "this t is not that" which tells me that este/a/o is this and ese/a/o is that. It's hardly a brilliant memory gimmick, and someone else's gimmick doesn't always work anyway, but I offer it just in case it helps.
I relate it with 'tu' and 'su'. When do I call someone tú? When I feel close to that someone. When do I use esto? When that thing is close to me.
I think the most appropriate translation should have been " Has gone crazy " because we refer to a temporary state . Any comments from native British ?
Just for the record, Duo does not accept loco as a translation of loco. Nor does it accept salsa as a translation of salsa; fiesta as a translation of fiesta, patio as a translation of patio...
Loco is well known in English and used relatively commonly, but not as an English word. Like adiós and hasta la vista and qué pasa these are just international expressions. The same goes for fiesta, in fact fiesta is not any party, just some. That's also somewhat true of patio, and most definitely of salsa which in Spanish means ANY sauce, not just what we call salsa. It is dangerous to allow direct translation of borrowed words where the meanings don't line up exactly. That's why a word like patio is given a couple of different definitions so people can escape their preconxeptions based on the borrowed word. I have the same double take issue whenever they talk about a woman's sombrero, since that's another specialized borrowed word.
Actually, we should be able to translate it as "That man is loco" because loco is an accepted word in English just like patio, rodeo, and others. It is even listed in the Cambridge Dictionary -- https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/loco
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Call me a nutty American, but shouldn't "That man is nuts" be accepted as a valid translation of the word "loco?"
Absolutely. But with a word like crazy in English you have too many slang alternatives which are quite common.
Synonyms: insane, nuts, wacky, kooky, nutty, silly, mad, screwball, lunatic, cuckoo, psycho, berserk, ape, barmy, batty, bonkers, cracked, crazed, daft, delirious, demented, deranged, dingy, dippy, erratic, flaky, fruity, idiotic, maniacal, mental, moonstruck, screwy, touched, unbalanced, unhinged, potty, bats in the belfry, flipped, flipped out, freaked out, mad as a March hare, mad as a hatter, nutty as fruitcake, of unsound mind, out to lunch, round the bend, schizo, screw loose, unglued, unzipped, out of one's mind, out of one's tree
Obviously there are some on the list that are more unusual, but there are several that are at least as popular among some people. In fact loco itself should really be on that list. For something that we have developed si many creative labels, I think it is fair to go with the one or too you are mist likely to use to someone in a somewhat more formal manner. Crazy is certainly the most common way to say it. Insane sounds a little more clinical, although I don't really think it is.
Absolutely. And there are a lot of others along the same pattern a few somethings less than something.
I agree it is common. The problem is that, without context, it is also ambiguous. Crazy only means crazy. Mad can mean either crazy or angry. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who might make false assumptions if it were accepted.
