Si Dios quiere -o - Si Dios quiera ?

dv8

Gold
Sep 27, 2006
31,266
363
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Mi pap? tiene 47 a?os = my dad is 47 years old
Mi papa tiene 47 anos = my potato has 47 assholes


ha ha ha, this is great :) just care not to write: mi pap? tiene 47 anos ;) ;) ;)
 

bronzeallspice

Live everyday like it's your last
Mar 26, 2012
11,009
2
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Mi pap? tiene 47 a?os = my dad is 47 years old
Mi papa tiene 47 anos = my potato has 47 assholes


ha ha ha, this is great :) just care not to write: mi pap? tiene 47 anos ;) ;) ;)

LOL! The accent mark is so important. Makes all the difference.:)
 

mofongoloco

Silver
Feb 7, 2013
3,002
9
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Isn't this phrase more accurately translated as "if god wills it".

Querer is used so variably I sometimes get confused. I have a Mexican fren, un charro puro del campo. He says te quiero mucho as a goodbye. And in texting it's tkm.

Nunca estud? el espa?ol y me falta mucho cuando trato a escribir. La verdad es que i am just too lazy to learn.
 

Mauricio

Gold
Nov 18, 2002
5,607
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The phrase 'si Dios quiere' is coming from James 4:15:

James 4:13-16
Boasting About Tomorrow
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

I must say that some people seem to think that if you don't add Si Dios quiere or Deo Volente, it will probably not work out. The idea obviously is to acknowledge that we can make plans but it's God who decides what happens.
 
Dec 26, 2011
8,071
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The phrase 'si Dios quiere' is coming from James 4:15:

James 4:13-16
Boasting About Tomorrow
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

I must say that some people seem to think that if you don't add Si Dios quiere or Deo Volente, it will probably not work out. The idea obviously is to acknowledge that we can make plans but it's God who decides what happens.

Exactly. That's the origin. I'm impressed, Mauricio. :)

Lamentably, the spirit of the passage has been lost on many and the phrase has become just another formalism.
 

H.concience

New member
Jul 17, 2013
240
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You cant allways translate litteraly .

If god wants. I allways feel like ok so i will only get there save if its what god wants? Im screwed
 

jabuti

New member
Mar 13, 2011
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26 posts! Fascinating. Here is another one! The Mexican parent of one of the students I tutored ALWAYS added an "s" to second person preterite: fuistes, vistes, acabastes la tarea. Crisp, clear, and even emphasized. I'd read that some uneducated classes have evolved to do it as it sounds more "intelligent". It even had a name, this phenomenon. I'm interested in this sort of thing if anyone has good sources.
 
Dec 26, 2011
8,071
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26 posts! Fascinating. Here is another one! The Mexican parent of one of the students I tutored ALWAYS added an "s" to second person preterite: fuistes, vistes, acabastes la tarea. Crisp, clear, and even emphasized. I'd read that some uneducated classes have evolved to do it as it sounds more "intelligent". It even had a name, this phenomenon. I'm interested in this sort of thing if anyone has good sources.

It's called finura.
 

Marianopolita

Former Spanish forum Mod 2010-2021
Dec 26, 2003
4,821
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26 posts! Fascinating. Here is another one! The Mexican parent of one of the students I tutored ALWAYS added an "s" to second person preterite: fuistes, vistes, acabastes la tarea. Crisp, clear, and even emphasized. I'd read that some uneducated classes have evolved to do it as it sounds more "intelligent". It even had a name, this phenomenon. I'm interested in this sort of thing if anyone has good sources.


Adding /s/ to the second person singular verb form t? in the preterit in my observation is not specific to any region because I have heard it from speakers from various Latin American countries. However, I can’t comment on Spain regarding this grammatical phenomenon.

It is believed that speakers make this error because it is the only t? form out of all the verb tenses that does not have an /s/. Therefore, instinctively some speakers add /s/ to the preterit form of the second person singular and of course that is grammatically incorrect.

Educated and uneducated speakers alike make this error which I can’t understand because those who have education should have been corrected along the way by their teachers. I know several people with education beyond high school who say venistes, acabastes, dijistes, hablastes etc. I also think to a certain extent it’s regional but the more I hear it the more I question the reason for this error.

Foreigners should not repeat it and unfortunately some do thinking that they sound more local or they will fit in with the group of speakers around them who speak this way. However, it’s one of the many incorrect forms of speech you will hear in the Spanish-speaking world. The more grammar you know in Spanish, the more empowered you are to recognize incorrect speech patterns and grammatical errors. In the DR, you will also hear people add /s/ to words where they do belong and even to some verb forms in the present tense for example the third person singular. A person once said to me (from San Pedro de Macoris) 'si ?l se vas'....

If you are interested in this aspect of language in Spanish, it falls under the specialization called sociolinguistics. If you study Spanish at a higher level and eventually specialize in one area, sociolinguistics is the one that analyzes speech patterns of society as they relate to language. There is plenty of reading material on sociolinguists in general and then references specific to this concept in Spanish. It’s still considered a relatively new discipline and as the language evolves there is more to observe and document. Anyone can make observations about language and the way people speak but sometimes it’s hard to understand why people speak a certain way.

If your focus is on Spanish spoken in the Dominican Republic, you may want to read a book that was referenced here many years ago in the forum- C?mo hablamos los dominicanos by Grupo Le?n Jimenes. It’s an excellent read. I read it thoroughly twice and it’s also serves as a good reference to go back to for details. It’s a well-researched sociolinguistic analysis of Spanish spoken in the DR and many of the lexical (vocabulary), syntax (sentence structure), verb forms, phonetic observations, expressions, etc are classic examples of what you will hear in the Dominican vernacular and some cases in the Caribbean in general (Cuba and PR) and Caribbean basin areas (Panama, coastal Colombia and coastal Venezuela) as well.

Article: C?mo hablamos los dominicanos - Hoy Digital

The book: http://www.glj.com.do/a/d/doc-comohablamos.pdf or the other link below

Grupo Le?n Jimenes | Biblioteca virtual | C?mo hablamos los dominicanos

If you like to observe the differences in the spoken language across the Spanish-speaking world not only is it interesting but it will make your Spanish even better. Keep observing and the way to do this is listen to all speakers speak, speak to any Spanish speaker and read Spanish from any country. It’s the same language just with many regional varieties. Another interesting short reference to read is Sociolinguistics by Bernard Spolsky.

I am reading a novel right now and even if I wanted to overlook the regional differences I can’t because the book is full of regionalisms and sociolinguistics aspects of Spanish notably el voseo which is not heard in the Caribbean but used in many parts of Spanish-speaking world specifically in the Southern Cone of South America and most of Central America (the pronoun vos is not used in Spain and it should not to be confused with vosotros which is used in Spain)


-MP.
 
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Aguaita29

Silver
Jul 27, 2011
2,629
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", but when I was in the DR, I thought I was hearing "quiera". What is the real deal?

Maybe the person was, in fact, saying "quiere", but the way they said it you heard "quiera". When you`re dealing with a foreign language It`s very common to think you heard something different to what the other person actually said. For example, someone posted here that Dominicans say "derecho" and "derecha" the same. Maybe the same thing is happening to you.

When I was studying English there was this song I loved that I thought said "In the dell". A couple of years later I heard it again and I realized it said "Didn`t we girls?!". There was another one that I would sing like this: "I can feel the hmm hmm If I can hmm hmm tonight!!". A few years later I heard it again, and I clearly understood it said "I can dream about you if I can`t hold you tonight".

It was like if I had my ears filled with wax for many years, and someone had cleaned them. LOL
 

Norma Rosa

Bronze
Feb 20, 2007
1,127
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Maybe the person was, in fact, saying "quiere", but the way they said it you heard "quiera". When you`re dealing with a foreign language It`s very common to think you heard something different to what the other person actually said. For example, someone posted here that Dominicans say "derecho" and "derecha" the same. Maybe the same thing is happening to you.

That's exactly what I was going to say, thanks.
 
Aug 6, 2006
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This is correct. The present subjunctive (quiera) is never used after si (meaning if).

The PAST subjunctive can be used after si, though. Si quisiera decirte, te lo dir?a. If I wanted to tell you, I would.

Quiera Dios, is like saying "May God will it", or "God willing".