Ok.

1. Sabe que quiere hacer.
2. Sabe que quiere hacer lo.

While writing these, I realize another question that I'll touch on first.
I started thinking on this conundrum with sentence one:

1. He knows what he wants to do.

However, when creating sentence two, I realize that something, perhaps, is amiss. Sentence two is:

2. He knows that he wants to do it.

See?

The first sentence uses 'que' for 'what', while the second sentence uses 'que' for 'that'. 'Que' is a variable word and is used for both words, but is sentence one properly constructed? Now that I'm looking at them, I'm not entirely sure.

It becomes even more complicated with the third sentence:

3. He knows what he wants to have done.

How would I construct this sentence?

3. Sabe que quiere _________.

Ha echo?
He echo?

See. The problem is that 'ha' and 'he' denote who's doing the doing. The english sentence doesn't have anything to say about who's doing the doing. That's irrelevant. The only thing that is under discussion is that the doing is done, not who does it.

Is "ha echo" the wrong tense? It is "have done" but is it used the same in spanish as in english? (What, by the way, is this tense called? I'm thinking it's a perfect tense? Future perfect, perhaps?)

Should I perhaps use 'ser'?

3. Sabe que quiere ser echo? Ha echo? ???

This is an odd tense and I have no clue how to do this in Spanish.
I know Fraggle knows spanish and can lend a hand. Anyone else?

Also, because I'm speaking about 'him', would I use 'ha echo' (assuming that's the right tense) because I'm speaking from my perspective? Or would I perhaps use 'he echo' because I'm speaking about what he wants and so I switch to his perspective after the 'quiere'?

Confusing. (Or as a coworker says "confoosing".)

1. Sabe que quiere hacer.Punctuation error. It should be, El sabe, qué quiere hacer. When que is used as the question "what?" it is always written with the accent ague (that's the French term we all use but never mind). In addition. Spanish speakers rarely omit the subject of a sentence unless it's one in a long series with the same subject, poetry, or really casual slang. Only Americans talk that way. :) A native speaker would use the pronoun él, which, I believe, also carries the accent mark to distinguish it from the definite article. It's omitted over capital letters, but I notice that rule is changing.
2. Sabe que quiere hacer lo.Another punctuation error. Always attach a pronoun object to an infinitive or a gerund. Me gusta conocerte. El perro está escuchándome. El sabe que quiere hacerlo. Also the other error again: always include the pronoun as the subject.
The first sentence uses 'que' for 'what', while the second sentence uses 'que' for 'that'. 'Que' is a variable word and is used for both words, but is sentence one properly constructed? Now that I'm looking at them, I'm not entirely sure.English uses prepositions like "to," "at," and "for" to mean a gazillion different things. Our pathetic little set of prepositions, left over from the Stone Age, is so inadequate that over the past couple of generations we have created a new grammatical rule, allowing us to build phrases in order to circumvent them that would have made Shakespeare scratch his head, such as cable-ready, user-friendly, cost-effective and resource-intensive. We are actually living to see the basic structure of English adapting to a new era. This is probably the first time something like this has happened since the evolution of Middle English into Modern English more than 500 years ago. Anyway, so the Spanish word que has two meanings as well. If you're uncomfortable with that, don't ever try to learn Chinese. :)
It becomes even more complicated with the third sentence:3. He knows what he wants to have done. How would I construct this sentence?I think you're confusing the two meanings of "have done," yet another of our own language's ambiguities. This sentence can only mean "what he wants someone else to do instead of doing it himself," or "what he wants to be completed rather than leaving it undone." I don't think you can translate it so compactly into Spanish, you'd have to use more words to explain what you mean a little more clearly.

If you really want to talk about "have done" in the perfect mode, it's hard to wrestle into conformance with that sentence. I suppose you could say, "He knows what he wants to have done by Monday when he goes back to school: his report." That would translate as El sabe lo que querrá haber hecho el lunes al regresar en la escuela: su reporte. I can't quite put it in exactly the same tense and mode as the English example, I had to put "want" in the future tense.
3. Sabe que quiere _________. Ha echo? He echo?No. If you put one verb after another, the second one must be an infinitive: . . . quiere haber hecho, "wants to have done. "BTW, hecho is the past participle of hacer and begins with the same silent H. From Latin factus and facere, respectively. Generally Latin initial F became silent in Spanish and is represented by H for some inscrutable reason. The Italians erased their silent H when they reformed their spelling a hundred years ago.
See. The problem is that 'ha' and 'he' denote who's doing the doing. The english sentence doesn't have anything to say about who's doing the doing. That's irrelevant. The only thing that is under discussion is that the doing is done, not who does it.Yes. That's why you have to put the verb into the infinitive mode, which in English takes two words since we don't have such elaborate inflectional endings as the Romance languages (the family of Latin's descendants including also Portuguese, French, Catalan, Occitan and Romanian). Haber = "to have."
Is "ha echo" the wrong tense? It is "have done" but is it used the same in spanish as in english?The problem is that in English we don't have inflected suffixes to show that a verb is in the infinitive mode. We have to say "to love." In Spanish it's one word, amar. Translation is an art because you can't translate each word into exactly one word in the target language.
What, by the way, is this tense called? I'm thinking it's a perfect tense? Future perfect, perhaps?Perfect is a mode; present, past and future are tenses. "She has eaten," ella ha comido is the present perfect. "She had eaten," ella había comido is the past perfect. "She will have eaten," ella habrá comido is the future perfect. There is also the conditional mode, "She would eat," Ella comería and the subjunctive mode, "If she had eaten," si ella hubiera comido. In English we almost always express modes with auxiliary verbs; in Spanish they do it with inflected suffixes. Our only exception is, "If I were king," and that form is passing into disuse. It goes without saying that both English and Spanish have the perfect conditional, "she would have eaten," ella habría comido, and Spanish has both past and perfect subjunctives. (I used the present perfect subjunctive in my example above.)
Should I perhaps use 'ser'?No. A past participle is construed as a condition so it must always take estar. "The house is covered with snow," la casa está cubierto de nieve.
3. Sabe que quiere ser echo? Ha echo? ??? This is an odd tense and I have no clue how to do this in Spanish. Also, because I'm speaking about 'him', would I use 'ha echo' (assuming that's the right tense) because I'm speaking from my perspective? Or would I perhaps use 'he echo' because I'm speaking about what he wants and so I switch to his perspective after the 'quiere'?You got off on the wrong track because you didn't think in terms of using the infinitive.

Ne habla espagnol

Fraggle,

Thanks. I had the feeling that it was 'hecho' but am learning spanish through spoken lessons, not on paper so have some issues with spellings and whatnot.

I have some questions but will spend some time gathering my thoughts and whatnot and post later.


Draqon,

Ever get tired of being a boring pain in the ass?

Draqon,

Ever get tired of being a boring pain in the ass?

what else is there?:bugeye:

....
Draqon,

Ever get tired of being a boring pain in the ass?

LMAO! Its why I have him on ignore. Its a lot easier/quicker to read through threads.

LMAO! Its why I have him on ignore. Its a lot easier/quicker to read through threads.

Well thanks a lot. Its people like you who I can't stand.

I've always thought my kids should learn to speak Spanish (I'm from the line of my family that doesn't, bummer) but now I'm thinking it may be smarter to learn Chinese.

Ok.
1. Sabe que quiere hacer.



I think Sabe lo que quiere hacer is an option

I've always thought my kids should learn to speak Spanish (I'm from the line of my family that doesn't, bummer) but now I'm thinking it may be smarter to learn Chinese.I would agree with that decision for several reasons. For starters, Chinese is not an Indo-European language, so it represents a much different way of thinking than Spanish, Russian or Hindi. For another, it is a very modernized language: no gender, number, tense, person, etc. No inflections, extremely simple rules. It's much better adapted to a quickly changing world than most languages, arguably including English. You spend your time learning how to express interesting ideas instead of conjugating verbs. And of course there's the fact that about five times as many people speak Chinese as Spanish, so there's a good chance that it will be a more practical choice.

Down side: The written language is horrible. If you don't start learning it when you're six it's difficult to ever be really expert in it. Of course the Chinese know this too and it's inevitable that they will adopt a phonetic alphabet sooner or later. The pronunciation is also a little hard for Americans, but most of us get it, even if we could never pass as natives. There's a lot to be said for having to deal with tone as phonemic, so you lose that bandwidth for expressing feelings. If you're speaking Chinese and you want someone to know how you feel, you can't sneak it in with subtle intonations. You have to use your intellect and express it in words. A natural talent for the Internet Generation!

There's nothing wrong with Spanish if that's what they prefer. The key is to start learning a second language as young as possible, it doesn't matter which one. It develops new areas of the brain that give a person the advantage of being able to look at things from more than one perspective, and it also smooths the way for learning a third language later.

Both Chinese people and Latinos are fairly gracious with foreigners who are studying their language, and there are a lot of them in America. Whichever one he chooses, he won't lack for people to practice with.

I suppose one important advantage of Chinese is that it's spoken quite a bit more slowly than Spanish, and even rather more slowly than English, because it doesn't require as many syllables to express the same thought. This makes it easy for a student or a foreigner to follow a conversation and pick out the words he already knows to help him puzzle out the rest. That is really really REALLY difficult in Spanish.

...hmmm...someone erased my post here...

o well.

...hmmm...someone erased my post here... o well.I did. I'm the Moderator. My explanation should be viewable to you. We have a much higher proportion of non-Americans on this board and I try to avoid misunderstandings that might not occur among people who are more familiar with American culture and our rough-hewn ways.

Sorry.

Si, yo habla espanol mucho!

Just kidding, but I do know a bit. Enough to hold a simple conversation.


Te gusta mas engles o espanol?

Yo gusta mas espanol

Gracias.

De nada. Y ti?

A mi tambien.

Si, yo habla espanol mucho!Yo hablo español. The verb has to agree with the subject in inflected languages like Spanish.
Te gusta mas engles o espanol?inglés. Many languages spell their words for "England" and "English" with an A (French Angleterre, anglais) or an I (Italian Inglaterra, inglese). Our Germanic family is the major exception: German englisch, Danish engelsk. The name of the country was originally Angle Land, named after the tribe of Angles who migrated from what is now Germany around 400CE. "England" still has counties with names like East Anglia.
Yo gusta mas espanolMe gusta más el español. Gustar means "to please," not "to like," so the pronoun is actually the object of the verb, not the subject: "Spanish pleases me." And when the name of a language is the subject of a sentence, it takes the article. When in doubt with a Spanish noun, err on the side of caution and put in the article. For example, it will only sound a little bit strange to say, Cómo se dice "Fraggle" en el español?", whereas it will sound really wrong to say, Español es mi lengua favorita.

....I suppose one important advantage of Chinese is that it's spoken quite a bit more slowly than Spanish, and even rather more slowly than English, because it doesn't require as many syllables to express the same thought. ...

Yeah, umm, I was thinking it would just make it easier for them to get a really good job in the future. Never gave a thought to which was easier/harder. Just which one would have more profit connected to it.

The problem is that in English we don't have inflected suffixes to show that a verb is in the infinitive mode. We have to say "to love." In Spanish it's one word, amar.
When I was going to college in Bloomington, Indiana the locals (townies) would never use the infinitive. They'd say something like, "I need done that" (or something like that) instead of 'I need to do that". It used to drive me crazy.