Answers
Apr 23, 2014 - 08:45 PM
Ask me what is the difference between conditional & subjunctive in English and I may (conditional or subjunctive? lol) give you a stare. Take a look at http://forum.wordreference.com/showth... and other places where this question has been asked. It looks like the country also plays a role in the use of querría vs quisiera. It looks like although Fluenz tries to be neutral it tends to teach Spanish that is mostly used in Columbia or Venezuela. For example they teach cruzar to mean "to turn" but in México it never means to turn, it only means to cross. I have used quisiera in México and had no problem, and i'm still unable to do the long r roll so I prefer using quisiera rather than querrrrrrrrría lol
Apr 23, 2014 - 09:48 PM
@ Fabrice: The forum on WordReference was quite interesting. If I did not open this proverbial "can of worms", then one could certainly say that I stepped in it. I think I better not try to get too far ahead of myself with the grammatical hair-splitting, and more or less take things the at the pace in which Fluenz is presenting the concepts. Besides, that long rrrrrrrrr is a real challenge for me tambien.
Apr 29, 2014 - 09:10 AM
Hi @Banjolover47
Wow, you really have opened a can of worms here. But I think you found the best approach for yourself in this case. Which is to take it one step at a time and not worry too much about the tense in Spanish here. Sometimes we need to learn things as expressions without questioning them too much because there is no direct equivalent in English that makes sense to us or would help us understand the concept any better or easier. That's why we haven't explained the tenses used here in detail but we still wanted you to be able to use the polite forms of "yo puedo" and "yo quiero" as Spanish speakers would use them. And we will go into more detail in later levels.
I hope this helps!
Wow, you really have opened a can of worms here. But I think you found the best approach for yourself in this case. Which is to take it one step at a time and not worry too much about the tense in Spanish here. Sometimes we need to learn things as expressions without questioning them too much because there is no direct equivalent in English that makes sense to us or would help us understand the concept any better or easier. That's why we haven't explained the tenses used here in detail but we still wanted you to be able to use the polite forms of "yo puedo" and "yo quiero" as Spanish speakers would use them. And we will go into more detail in later levels.
I hope this helps!
Apr 29, 2014 - 10:01 AM
Thank you Fluenz Laboratorians for your thoughtful reply.