Okay, today (05.05.05) on the shoutbox, I shouted a sentence, and then fsastraps said that I was wrong. At first, I thought it was because the adjective did not agree with it's noun in gender, but he told me that it was another issue.

Sentence:

My translation:I know there are a few miscellaneous errors in there such as the lack of accent marks and the use of a fake word ("forum"), but those don't matter.

fsastraps' translation:

Now, what I want to know is, do adjectives in Spanish come after or before the noun that they are modifying? In my sentence, the adjective new ("nuevo") comes after the noun that it is modifying ("forum"). This makes sense because I remember telling myself in Spanish I (I'm in Spanish 3 now) that Spanish is similar to Vietnamese, which I speak, adjective-wise because the adjectives come after the noun that they are modifying. However, there is an exception to this:
As you can see, the adjective "mi" ("my") comes before the noun that it's modifying, house ("casa"), but this happens because "mi" is a possessive pronoun.

Anyways, please do not reply to this thread if you have no idea what the word Spanish means, or you have never spoke it in your life. I want serious answers only, and I will close this thread once someone experienced tells me that I'm right.

Edit: Added accent marks to make some people comfortable...

 

 

 

Reply

Hey snlildude, you know I was born in mexico, and spanish is my First language, yeah i understad the fact theat Most of the times the adjective will go after the noun, but i've got another sentece for you in which the adjective comes before the noun, "el rojo caparazon" translated to english this would be "the red shell". I mean i understand that the rule applies most of the times, but thre are allways special cases and by saying "Donde esta el nuevo forum " is one of those, and it makes more sense that way, than by saying, "Donde esta el forum nuevo".

Reply

I was always taught that adjectives aside from numeric and good/bad went after the noun. Also, if we're assuming an accent, you conjugated estar wrong. "Where is the new forum?" I would translate to "¿Dónde está el foro nuevo?" (but I'm not sure about "foro" for "forum"- I just babelfished that)

Reply

One person agrees with me. Yay.

I did not conjugate estar wrong because I mentioned that I did not put the accent marks on some of the verbs (I don't know the ASCII numeric value for the accents, and I accidently deleted my Microsoft Character Map ).

Thanks for your reply.

Edit: Fixed my grammar.

 

 

 

Reply

Fsastraps is right. The adjective's position definitely depends on the adjective and the context of the situation. For instance:

El hombre grande

and

El grande hombre

...mean respectively "the great man" and "the large man" (unless it's the other way around).

I once learned a rule for determining the position of the adjective, but I have since forgotten it.

However, in my French studies, we were taught the acronym B.A.G.S. which stands for:

Beauty
Age
Goodness
Size

If any French adjective pertains to these attributes, they go before the noun, and if not, they go after. Because Spanish and French are so similar, I would assume this rule generally applies for Spanish as well.

So, because "grande" in one of the above senses refers to size, it would go before and imply "large". I may be wrong... Fsastraps, does that sound right to you?

Reply

clagnol, that sounds perfectly right to me, because i took a french class and a spanish class the semester after (spanish 6 and french 1, just for the record), and we talked about B.A.G.S. two. It is a true rule.

and now that you mention it, i can definately proove my point right snlildude87. Because infact french and spanish are very similar languages.

And it does make more sense by saying �¿Donde estas el nuevo forum? It is one of those times in which it depends on the situation that you are using the sentece for, and clagnol explained it perfectly with his example.

Reply

I'll ask my Spanish teacher about it tomorrow....

Reply

well was your spanish teacher born in the US or is she from latin america?

Reply

Actually when you use "grande" before a singular masculine word it gets shortened to "gran" but that doesn't really matter right now.

When you conjugated estar to "estás" (giving you the benefit of the accent, there) it means "you are." "Está" would be "it is." You wouldn't say "Where are you the new forum?"

Reply

Spanish teachers. I believe one of them was born in Latin America, but two of them were born in the US, but all three have masters degree in the field.

By the way, I did not get a chance to ask them today because we had a Spanish writing final.


beeseven, I did not write "estás", but I wrote "esta", and I specifically said that I did not put the accent marks in any of the words that needed accent marks. So, "esta" (which is what I have) should be "está". Just to repeat, I did not put accent marks on any of the words that needed accent marks, but just to appease you, I'll do it right now.

Reply