Answers
Jan 25, 2011 - 04:23 PM
The difference between saber and conocer is very very difficult to grasp for an English speaker. It is hard to explain as the boundary isn’t exact.
You would never say yo conozco quien es, because in a sense here you’re not necessarily talking about what you directly know about the person, you are just generally saying that you know that person exists. So you could actually say,
Yo sé quien es Juan, pero no lo conozco. I know who Juan is (as in I have seen him around, maybe I met him once) but I don’t know him (but I don’t have real personal knowledge about him.)
I know this is a tough one, but it fans out little by little. The first attempt to understand is just really really tough. And even this explanation woudln’t necessarily apply to everything.
This example would definitely apply to people, but not to things. For things, more prepositions and other tags would have to be added to show this idea. I’ll give you an example that is much more advanced.
Yo sé de Fluenz, es una compañía que enseña idiomas, no? Pero no conozco los programas...
I know about Fluenz, it´s a company that teaches languages, right? But I don’t know the programas.
Here DE had to be added. I will not explain this now as it will only add to teh confusion. For now, I hope this explanation cleared things up a little bit. But just follow the examples and surely a pattern will arise. Patience is the key here.
You would never say yo conozco quien es, because in a sense here you’re not necessarily talking about what you directly know about the person, you are just generally saying that you know that person exists. So you could actually say,
Yo sé quien es Juan, pero no lo conozco. I know who Juan is (as in I have seen him around, maybe I met him once) but I don’t know him (but I don’t have real personal knowledge about him.)
I know this is a tough one, but it fans out little by little. The first attempt to understand is just really really tough. And even this explanation woudln’t necessarily apply to everything.
This example would definitely apply to people, but not to things. For things, more prepositions and other tags would have to be added to show this idea. I’ll give you an example that is much more advanced.
Yo sé de Fluenz, es una compañía que enseña idiomas, no? Pero no conozco los programas...
I know about Fluenz, it´s a company that teaches languages, right? But I don’t know the programas.
Here DE had to be added. I will not explain this now as it will only add to teh confusion. For now, I hope this explanation cleared things up a little bit. But just follow the examples and surely a pattern will arise. Patience is the key here.