New grammar points (II)

Hey Guys!

I’m glad to see you’re participating so much. Thank you all! Special thanks to José Luis B, Magda, Carmen Luisa, Loly, Cristina, Juan Pedro, Maico and Juan Luis for writing!

Time for some grammar!

- Guys! Remember that you always listen TO music!!!

- You can hear music and listen to music, but these two activities are not the same. You listen to music on purpose, like for example when you play a CD at home or some songs on your Ipod. If you hear music, that often means that you can perceive the sound even if you don’t want to, like when you're walking down the street and you hear music coming from a car. It’s not your intention to hear it; it’s simply there, and you hear it. So José Luis B, in your room you listen to music, because you decide to do so, and Juan Pedro, when you were younger you probably listened to your sister’s record, you didn’t “hear” it. And José Luis B, remember to be careful with Spanish! In English you organize or have a party, but you can’t “ride” it :-) You "ride" a motorbike, or a horse. :-)

- There are many verbs followed by prepositions in Spanish which don’t take prepositions in English or which, when they do, they don’t mean the same. In Spanish you often see “to” a person and you know “to” a person. But in English, you don’t; you “see someone” and you “know someone.” So Magda, remember, if you know Elvis, you don’t “know to him,” you simply know him. It’s the same type of mistake I have found in your comments, Juan Luis, you don’t “ask to people,” you simply ask people.

- Jose Luis B, you have given me the chance to introduce a really cool word that’s widely used in America. You told Alex that you had a “dude,” I think again translating from Spanish. The correct word would be “question,” like in class. Now of course the word “dude” exists in English. It is used in America in the same way you use the Spanish words “tío” or “tipo” – a colloquial term to say “guy.” It is a very cool word and many young people use it all the time. You can greet each other by saying “Hey dude!” :-D  It’s very funny.

-Hey Carmen Luisa! Remember that musicians like Verdi or Puccini are composers, not compositors :-)

- When you speak about music from a certain decade, there is a specific way to refer to those years.

Loly, music from the 80s is music from the eighties, not “of eighty age” :-) Also, when you want to speak about a given musician’s work, you speak about music by, not of (“I like some songs by Eminem”).  You can also say this using the Saxon Genitive: “I like some of Eminem’s songs.” This is the same mistake I found in Juan Pedro’s comments – you say “songs by Elvis,” not “songs of Elvis.”

-Cristina, Spanish ONGs are called NGOs (“Non-governmental organizations”) in English. Don’t forget the adverb in the sentence “I don’t know how to write ONG in English." Remember that you go to concerts, not of concerts, and be careful not to forget the preposition when you use the present perfect in sentences like “it was the best concert that I have ever been to.”

- Juan Luis, in your comments you wrote “I use it to rest and thinking about my things.” Both “rest” and “think” are subordinate clauses that depend on the main sentence, and this means they need to have the same form. The correct version would then be “I use it to rest and to think about my things.”

- Hey Maico! Remember that when you speak about things you always do, or things in general, you use the present simple, so you say “music is more than something I sometimes listen to,” and not “something we listening to” (apart from this, remember that an "–ing form" can’t work as the main verb on its own). Also, in Spanish we often don’t have to specify the subject in the sentence other than in the verb ending (you can say “para mí es parte de mi vida” instead of “para mí eso es parte de mi vida”). But in English you always have to include the subject. So be specially careful with this type of sentence, because you can make mistakes as a consequence of thinking of the Spanish version. In English it would be “for me, it is a part of my life”). You make the same mistake later when you write “for me is a way of live” instead of the correct version: “for me it is a way of life.” When you say “once” you can’t add “time” after it, because “once” means “one time.” And when you do something once a year, you don’t say “all the years” in English but “every year.” Remember that “men” is a plural word (“hombres”) as well. What you mean is probably another “man.”

Thank you all and enjoy the new discussion topic I'll post later!!!