Work Unit Ten: ¿De quién es este hueso?
As you will see in this lesson, prepositions in Spanish can be quite versatile. Just as we learned in the previous lesson with the proposition a, there isn't always a one-to-one correspondence between prepositions in English and Spanish.| Read, listen and learn in the About
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In this lesson we will learn the main usages of the preposition de. Although it's most common translations are "of" and "from," it also has other uses.
Assignment
Complete the lesson on pages 101-08 of the textbook. Although the concepts in this chapter are easier to understand than some of the verb issues we have dealt with in earlier lessons, be sure you know them thoroughly.If you have friends you are studying with, try reading out the main story as a play. You'll almost certainly have a good time doing so. You also should listen to the spoken supplement to this lesson, especially if you are still learning how the words are pronounced.
Be sure to complete the exercises. Although copyright rules and fairness to other students using this book prevent me from publishing all the answers, you can check the answer page to see an answer to the first question in each section to help get you started. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them on the bulletin board.
Background
If nothing else, this lesson shows the importance of context in determining in determining how words in another language should be translated or understood.You may find it interesting that even the title of this lesson is ambiguous if you don't know the context. In fact, it's meaning might not be clear (perhaps even to a Spanish-speaking person) until you're almost through with the story. That's because, out of context, there are two equally valid ways the question of the title could be understood: ¿De quién es este hueso? could mean "From whom is this bone?," or it could just as easily mean "Whose bone is this?" (or, literally, "Of whom is this bone?"). In some contexts, it wouldn't make much difference which is meant, but in a case like this (where there's a transfer of ownership) it could make a difference. Of course, once the question is asked in context the meaning is clear..
If you needed to ask this question in an unambiguous manner, there are ways of doing so. For example, ¿A quién pertenece este hueso? means "To whom does this bone belong?" And ¿Quién dió este hueso? means "Who gave this bone?"
As you can see in this lesson, de is a versatile preposition. And, as you might expect, in some contexts other prepositions also can be used. For example, to use the namesake of this Web site, "about," as in "about Spanish," can also be expressed in some contexts with sobre and acerca de. Sometimes the prepositions can be used interchangeably; sometimes certain prepositions go best with certain verbs. Of course, the same is true in English: "I'm speaking of my mother" and "I'm speaking about my mother" mean basically the same thing, as does "I'm speaking concerning my mother."
Some other uses of de are also discussed in the audio supplement.
Coming up:
In the next lesson, we will study the use of ser, one of the two main verbs meaning "to be."
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