🦋 Going to
If nothing else, La sombra del viento is certainly broadening my understanding of Spanish tenses. For instance, I did not know there was a present continuous in Spanish -- and it does not seem to be very common, certainly not as ubiquitous as in English, but occasionally a character will say something like "¡Lo está inventando!" ("You're making that up!")* -- Daniel said this to FermÃn a few chapters ago, I've forgotten just what the context was. And today I see for the first time something that looks a lot like the English future progressive** ("going to ...") when FermÃn says "Me parece que va siendo hora de que nos dejemos de remilgos y de picar al portal como si pidiésemos limosna. En este asunto hay que entrar por la puerta de atrás." -- which I am reading as, "It seems to me that there's going to come a time when we will need to leave aside our squeamishness and stop knocking on the door as if we were begging for alms. In this matter it's necessary to enter through the back door." And a little later, he says "Pues vaya desempolvando el disfraz de monaguillo" -- something like "Then go dust off your altar-boy disguise" but expressed with that same combination of ir + -ndo, "You are going to dust off." In English you can say "You are going to" do something in an imperative voice, maybe that's what is going on here.
In general FermÃn's language is a lot more flowery than that of the other characters, and harder to read without a dictionary. I believe Daniel remarked on this at some point right around the time FermÃn was first introduced. I'm thinking FermÃn is Ruiz Zafón's nod to Picaresque literature, he is intended as an archaism.
 * More precisely, "¡Todo esto se lo está inventando usted!" -- the context is that FermÃn is telling him the indigent hospital's hearse wagon had been donated "by a company from Hospitalet de Llobregat specializing in butcher products, of dubious reputation, which years later was involved in a scandal." FermÃn replies in turn that his "gifts of imagination do not extend so far." ** Is this the correct name for what I'm talking about?
posted morning of Saturday, January 30th, 2010
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Hi Jeremy! It is amazing the way you understand the language while reading such a difficult book to learn spanish. You are doing it so good. Moreover, Spanish is certainly a difficult language to learn. Even between spanish native-language persons. I mean, the spanish spoken in México is quite different than spanish spoken in Argentina, Perú and Venezuela, not to say Puerto Rico or Costa Rica. Some of these countries speak commonly in present tense, others in present continuous and so on, not to say about the words used for common things, for example bus, autobus, guagua, colectivo, ómnibus, all the above indicate just one word in english: bus. In the Ruiz Zafón novel, you can add the literary resources he used. I guess that Fermin speaks as the XV century knights. Not so easy for you, but amazingly, your understanding is very good. Congratulations!
posted morning of January 31st, 2010 by Oswaldo Aiffil
¡Muchas gracias, Oswaldo!
posted morning of January 31st, 2010 by Jeremy
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