Thanks for clarifying. My late wife was a fluent Spanish speaker born in
Mexico City and with a Masters in Spanish Literature, but my Spanish is
pretty poor. I've traveled in Mexico a lot and helped put together a
sizeable joint venture there, so I'm good with transportation, hotels,
restaurants, etc. and used to be able to read financial statements and
leases, but not up on the niceties of the actual use of the language. I
just knew if somebody read Chris' post and told a taxi driver somewhere
derecho, trying to go right, they would be in trouble.
There are also, of course, regional issues. I thought 'ahorra' meant
'now', but in Mexico, its meaning is closer to 'mañana', or 'eventually'
than 'right away'. I missed most of a meeting by not knowing to use
'ahorrita'. I know that some Latin American Spanish speakers take great
delight is playing with words that are ordinary in one area and
scatalogical in another.
Moose
Fernando Gonzalez Gentile wrote:
Moose,
Being my mother tongue, I've always understood the following:
If you tell a taxi driver "Siga derecho" he will go straight ahead, and the
word derecho in this context is neutral, neither masculine nor feminine.
If you are told "Mira la vista por la izquierda", you can be told "Mira la
vista por la derecha" just the same, because the grammatical structure
implied in this sentence is the omited noun "mano" (hand) which is always
feminine. If the person speaking wishes to use the noun "lado" (side) which
is always masculine, he will have to say "izquierdo" and "derecho" as you
correctly pointed out; and is almost impossible to omit.
PS: Thanks for your offer to scan slides. May I keep in touch ?
Sure, I'd be happy to scan a few slides for any listee, but from what
Tom S. says, there is some list of willing scanners that I'm not on and
at least some, like him, have 4000dpi scanners rather than my paltry
2700dpi.
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