La mayoría de esta entrada está en inglés, pero un poco está en español.
It's my understanding that English has a lot of prepositions. Prepositions are powerful: trading one for another is likely either incorrect, or will dramatically change the meaning of a sentence. I appreciate them for their expressivity and am glad that I don't have to learn them, but at the same time I don't know how to convey certain concepts in Spanish without a trove of prepositions to pull from.
Here I want to highlight examples with 2 prepositions: at and to.
I threw the ball to my sister. | I threw the ball with the intention that my sister catch it |
She talked to me over the phone. | We had a phone conversation |
I threw the ball at my sister. | I threw the ball in the direction of my sister, with the hope of hitting her. |
She talked at me (ad nauseam) over the phone. | My sister and I were on the phone, but she basically spoke non-stop without any regard for me. I could have put the phone down for an hour, come back and she wouldn't have noticed. (I added ad nauseam here because in this example I think we would normally add some indication of time, that is, how long did we endure being talked at) |
In my limited Spanish, I can say:
Le tiré la pelota a mi hermana. (I think this says "I threw the ball to my sister")
Ella me habló por teléfono. (I think this says "She talked to me over the phone")
But how can I throw the ball at somebody? And how can I talk at someone?
Expressing these nuances in Spanish is one of the hardest things... and I never know if they are carried over to the translations. Thank you for asking this question!!
Yo creo que la dificultad en su traducción se debe a que su origen no es latino y ambas preposiciones provienen del inglés antiguo y germánico.
Thanks all! Yes, I always want everything to be the same as the language I already know...but I guess the fun is in learning how they are different and thinking in a new way