Job Skills and Question Marks: From the Mailbox
Dateline: 08/14/00Updated: 08/16/00
Will there be a need for my language skills?
I want to know more about vosotros
How can I learn verb conjugation?
Where did the inverted question mark come
from?
Letters to this site come from all over, and from all sorts of people. And while I am unable to provide a personal response to everyone who writes, occasionally letters raise questions that are of interest to a broader audience. Here are some of them that have come recently, along with my answers. Questions are in boldface, the responses in regular type.
C ontinue what you're doing! Your English sounds very good, and there will always be a need for people who can help people of different languages communicate.
Machine translation has a long, long way to go. I can't imagine it improving to the point where it would be possible to write even a simple business letter and be able to depend on the computer for a good translation. Even the English-only grammar and style checkers are in need of much improvement and fail to catch many of the subtleties of language.
Keep up the good work, and your skills will certainly be needed.
I'm not sure I'm the one to ask — to be honest about it, I haven't done much to learn the vosotros forms, since I haven't been to Spain yet (in 2002, I hope!), and even if I did I'm not sure how often I'd need it. And none of the reference books I regularly use say very much about it. When I attended school in Guatemala a few years ago, they didn't even teach it as one of the verb forms, as in many parts of the world it simply isn't used.
The only thing that comes to mind is to read some classical literature, where you're more likely to come across it.
The subject of pronoun forms is interesting. In Guatemala I was told that there are many who use the pronoun vos instead of tú, but only with family members and especially close friends. (I assume that vosotros comes from vos otros.) I was also told that a man would never use vos when addressing another man. Although its usage varies from place to place, vos also is used in other parts of Central America and parts of South America, although tú also is used and understood.
Best wishes in your studies.
[Note: The following letter was received after the first publication of this page.]
I read your reply in your mailbox regarding the use of vosotros. I am not an expert but I would say that this is quite widely used in Spain.
I am English and have been learning Spanish with various Spanish teachers from Spain for five years and have always covered the use of this form. Indeed, it is quite common for the teacher to address the class with vosotros verb forms as we are a friendly bunch! It is certainly expected that students know and can use correctly this form for the most basic exams.
I always find it slightly frustrating when using American imported grammar books that vosotros doesn't appear at all! But then again I lisp my ci, which is very Castillian!
I wish I had good techniques for learning some of those. I have found that it doesn't work for me well to try memorizing things out of context. I enjoy reading, and what has helped me the most is after I have read something (usually for pleasure or to find news or information) to go back later and make sure I understand how everything in every sentence functions.
I might read a news article, for example, and understand well what it's saying even though I don't know every single word or every single construction used. But if I go back and use a dictionary or grammar guide or textbook or the Spanish Language site or whatever to make sure why everything is said the way it is said, I find I learn things I might not have known before.
To take a simple example: You may come across a sentence that says Pablo quisiera ser doctor, and you understand it to mean, "Paul wants to be a doctor." But you wonder why quisiera is used instead of quiere, and why there is no un before doctor, and that leads you to find out both something about new verb conjugation as well as something about the use of the definite article. Do that a few times, and eventually the rules start seeping into your head. And eventually, you'll be using what you learn without thinking about it.
Or you may run across an idiom like echar la casa por la ventana, one of my favorites. You might be able to tell from the context what it means, but if you look it up you're more likely to remember it.
At least, that what has helped me over the years. But everyone learns differently, and you need to find what works best for you.
I 've looked and looked and looked too. The only thing I've been able to find out (it was in an Encyclopedia Britannica article) is that it is of fairly recent origin, like the 1700s. That's considerably later than the time when Latin split up into several languages, and that explains why it exists in Spanish but not in other languages. But who started using it, I still don't know.
Sorry I can't tell you. Sometime in the next few weeks, I'll place your
letter and my response (or lack of it) on the site. Perhaps one of the
readers somewhere will know and provide the answer.
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