this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
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Just a side note, maybe they learned with Duolingo, because Duo is super bad about this shit and it annoys me. It will spend 100 lessons pushing "Smøren as butter, the suddenly start using it as "lubrication" and using the proper word for Butter.
Spanish has this a lot.
And you might also wonder, "how do you know if you are learning it." Sometimes it's really obvious based on the word clearly relating to a root word. Like recently where I am, it's pushing "anticuado" as "outdated". Except that is obviously "Antiquated". Which has a very very similar meaning, but it's a different word. Though this translator app is almost as bad because it's telling me outdated is "Obsoleto", which once again, is similar but not the same, and clearly "obsolete". The app also suggests "obliguado" which seems most likely the actual correct match, but only because I don't see an obvious similar English word there.
Sorry, I am just ranting on a meme.
But also when teaching languages, I wish these systems were much more precise. Don't give me similar words or synonyms, don't slightly rearrange the sentence structure in the translation, make it as close as possible. I am trying to learn Spanish, not "learn how to translate the spirit of the meaning."
Don't rely on word similarity without checking dictionaries, otherwise you will end up like people who think "bizarro" means "bizarre". False friends are a thing.
"obliguado" doesn't seem like a real Spanish word to me, and the RAE dictionaries seem to agree with me.
Also it's very common for certain words to have no equivalent translation with the same root, so you will have to settle for "words used in the target language in this situation" even if they don't quite get the nuances across.
A couple of my favorite false cognates in Spanish are:
pregunta = question
embarazada = pregnant
avergonzada = embarrassed
(I included that last one because I've never actually known how to say embarrassed in Spanish, and now I know.)
The "embarazada"/"embarrassed" mix-up is really common and it always elicits the same confused reaction from people who hear it for the first time.
Y ¿por que no los dos? A lady could be embarrassed about her pregnancy 😆
Or has a question at the doctor's
another thing is that, sometimes the etymological equivalent even if not a false cognate, may still carry very different semantics and connotations
Yeah, even within the same language too. e.g. Awful vs Awesome and Terrible vs Terrific
english is full of these thanks to double borrowings from french, like warden, guardian
Yes, exactly. Even true translations can carry different connotations, and that's part of what makes translation interesting, that even simple sentences can lose some implied meaning in a direct, correct translation.
The Bizzaro thing is a good point, but also knowing the actual meaning, it seems the English equivalent would be "Brazen". Which is similar in structure and meaning.
"brazen" is closer to "osado" or "audaz" in meaning. "bizarría" (noun) and "bizarro" (adjective) are used in old texts and patriotic songs and implies honorable or generous bravery, such as that of a liberator.
Gracias por la explicación.
My bigger issue is that learning the basics is not fucking structured or explained at all. I know when I started that it never explains definite and indefinite word forms and just expects you to somehow fucking realise how they work.
Yeah, the whole verbs thing still feels like just vibes and guessing and I am, in theory like B1 or B2 in Spanish now and I have been doing Duo for like a Decade (not just Spanish, some Japanese, Norwegian, and Chess).
Like "knight to C3"?
Yes, but also no. The Duolingo Chess courses were very repetitive and kind of lame.
Not nearly as lame as the math or music courses though. The Music ones would have been ok but the timing mechanic worked horribly. Like, how can I hit every note in a "Dance game" going a hundred beats per second, but somehow Duo can barely register the notes and timing for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?
Maybe it's better now, I have not tried, Duo "conveniently" (annoyingly) bought Beatstar which I had been also playing at the time and closed it (Beatstar).
duolingo is only useful as a practice tool
Yeah pretty much it could be more if it was structured to at least explain the basics and then the way it usually works would just be for learning new words. But it's all like that and you just have to figure out rules by yourself
... but isn't that what it is?
https://www.spanishdict.com/translate/outdated
https://dle.rae.es/anticuado
like if you say "paso un anciana en el camino" it doesn't mean you passed an Ancient, you just passed by an old woman.
I mean, yes but also anciana would kind of be the feminine word for "ancient/old person." Ancient feels a bit derogatory like "really old" but that comes down to cultural differences than grammar.
Here I am just wondering what the hell the right word is for butter, now. It's smør in my Norwegian-English dictionary and that was what I saw it as in shops when I was in Oslo this spring. I suspect it's less that the word for butter is entirely wrong, and more that it means lubrication in this context with the verb "å kjøre", which means "to drive."
I guess "Vi har sluppet opp for smør," would be closer to the right way, but my Norwegian still sucks, so I wouldn't be surprised if I picked the wrong option out of verbs listed under "run out" in the old Engelsk-Norsk Blå Ordbok, or even if I'm completely wrong.
One issue is that butter is in the definite (-en ending) which doesn't make sense to me. However, the word listed is the word I learnt from multiple sources as butter. I wonder if the definite ending is what changes the usage.
ETA: I finished my coffee and noticed the obvious: smør for butter is neuter. In the definite (which I still think is incorrect here) it would be smøret not smøren. This is why grammatical gender and articles are important.
No idea honestly. I did some Norwegian for a bit but not enough to learn what Butter is.
Maybe this is why the butter ran out to begin with - the message got lost in translation
"We keep ordering butter but they keep sending lubricant, soon the country's butter supply will run out! What do we do???"
(Pretend this is in Norwegian).
Because it is better to learn that way
Is it though? I am trying to learn the language and the nuance is important. I do not want to learn to translate the language. I don't want every conversation to bounce off my head saying "what is that in English, ok, then I would reply this, and what would that be in Spanish?"
I just want to learn it like it's its own language, because it is.
I don't want to see "Manzana" and think "Apple", I want to see "manzana" and think "fruta redonda y roja".
That happens naturally after reading and writing for a couple of years(depending on how intensive is the practice of the language). Eventually the brain just merges Manzana, Apple, リンゴ or whatever with the concept of that fruit without needing to do mental translations.
What you wrote about a direct translation is what kind of loses the nuance though.
Imo it's good to be aware of both, but ultimately language is a tool to convey meaning. In some cases it's also kind of impossible to have it both direct and keep the meaning, e.g. english says "on the bus/train" while german says "im bus/zug". German does have a direct translation for "on", which is "auf", but in this case it uses "im", which itself has the direct english translation of "in the" in english. I don't think any dictionary would list "in" as a translation for "on", it's just an etymological quirk that a different preposition is used.
Or more extremely, something like japanese to english, 公園で会いましょう, let's meet in the park, would have to be more literally translated as "using the park as the location, let's meet". (And I don't even know if that japanese sentence is completely correct, just tried to come up with something for locative で).
It's just not practical to always include. Speaking a language means to be able to take a meaning and express it. Translation is deriving the meaning and reexpressing it.
I think the more direct versions can be very useful for learning though. And while nuance does get lost sometimes, it's often unavoidable.
I think your last part probably is more my point. The more direct version is more useful for learning, especially the structure.
Just keeping on Spanish and Duo, which I have done more of, it often does things like, moves the word "always" or "never" to the end of a sentence in English, instead of translating it at the start of the sentence. And it's regularly both requiring "that" and omitting "that" in translations. Like "Quiro que", just becomes "I want" instead of "I want that". The "want that" is a little awkward in English, but it better emphasizes the structure of the original language so it's easier to learn the structure.
Also, personally, I kind of like some of the oddity of the more direct translation because it sounds a bit poetic in some places, and it sort of helps emphasize the overall connected nature of languages and how one may have branched off from another, losing or adding little flourishes, etc.
Yeah because your foundation is better, seems obvious to me