| You Passed 8th Grade Spanish |
 Congratulations, you got 8/8 correct! |
Language Liberalism Freethought Birds Verbing Weirds Language only if you're expecting it to work in a simple way. This is a special case of the more general truth that Language Weirds. Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it is in the wrong. There is no other time. The church says Earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence in a shadow than the church. If we can't find Heaven, there are always bluejays.
Eight correct here too, but, then, I did study Spanish. They're quite easy, but the ones that would trip up someone who doesn't know from Spanish are (2) and (5), which require you to know the difference between "ser" and "estar", a distinction unique to Spanish, as far as I know. Congratulations on getting those right!
ReplyDeleteI think I guessed on that based on having heard some Spanish sentences using "estar" - the distinction (I just looked it up) seems to be similar to the difference between nominative and instrumental predicates after "to be" in Russian. (Also probably between the current verb est and the archaic sut, both forms of "be"). I remember learning once that Proto-Indoeuropean had two verbs "to be" - looks like Spanish either preserved or resurrected that.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, like I said, looks like I guessed well!