This is the title to a Spanish (language) song*. I cannot make sense of the construction using the basic Spanish I know. Google Translate gives “I kiss your feet” without the quiero, or “I want to kiss the feet” with it. But neither of these fit normal grammar as I understand it. Is it an idiom?
What I do know is that “beses” is the second person singular present subjunctive of besar. “Me” is the object of this verb. So we have a subject, verb and an object, so where does “los pies” fit in? And is Google just being stupid and not translating the “you” portion?
I thought maybe “los pies” is the subject, and thus identified as being the object of address. So then it could be translated “(I want you to) kiss me, feet.” The alternative is that “los pies” is the object, and thus she is identifying herself with her feet, but that seems really weird. “I am my/your/his/her/our/their feet and I want you to kiss me.”
I did have one more idea when I was writing this. The way Spanish handles body parts is different than English. Is it possible that, in Spanish, a body part takes the same pronoun as the person it belongs to? In other words, one could refer to “me” when talking about my feet?
If you need them, here’s a link to the lyrics of the song. The site also shows the video.
*The part in parenthesis is technically not part of the title, but it’s present every time the title is sung, and I don’t think the subjunctive can be a complete sentence on its own.
tl;dr version: Translate to English the title of this song, and explain why it doesn’t seem to follow the normal rules of Spanish.
Literally translated, I believe it is “You kiss me the feet”. But this is just how it is laid out grammatically - the feet that are being kissed must be yours, because you are the one being kissed.
In Spanish, you can “lavarse las manos”, literally “wash yourself the hands”, before eating.
The phrase *(Quiero) Me beses los pies *is not correct Spanish. (Quiero) Que me beses los pies would be correct and it would mean “I want you to kiss my feet.”
The singer actually says the grammatically incorrect phrase.
Thanks! That’s the post that made it clear to me. Odd that I couldn’t find any information about that construction online. The only way given to disambiguate the owner of a body part was to actually use a possessive pronoun, e.g., mis pies.
I wondered about that, actually. When I looked for the lyrics to this song, I stumbled upon another song “Quiero Que Me Beses,” which reminded me of that rule. I thought maybe it was just used in formal Spanish or something. It wouldn’t be the first time I learned concepts that weren’t actually used in everyday Spanish.
Note that Google still does not disambiguate, completely disregarding the “me.” Unfortunately, the current tools no longer allow me to fix this.
The “you” is communicated by how the verb is conjugated. Similarly to Italian, pronouns can often be dispensed with if the ending of the verb carries its meaning–just as *Quiero *, by itself, means “I want” (although one could say “yo quiero” as well). In French, which has lost more of its verb morphology in speech, if not writing, omitting the pronoun is less often the possible.
Can you give an idea of how badly incorrect it is? I’m just curious if that construction would be considered acceptable in certain dialects or social contexts, just as “ain’t” and double negatives often appear in popular music; or if it’s just plain “wrong” in the sense that no native speaker would utter it.
It’s pretty wrong. It wouldn’t be part of slang usage. Plus, Spanish is a little more regimented than English, it doesn’t lend itself so easily to neologisms. I would say it sounds a bit brutish, a bit cavemanish.
No, you can “lavarte las manos”; the you calls for a -te. You can also wash another person’s hands, lavarle las manos a otro, or their head, car, floors… with the same construction ((Yo) Me he lavado las manos - I have washed my hands; Mamá me ha lavado las manos - Mommy has washed my hands); what makes the D.O. be reflexive or not is whether the action is reflexive (that is, being performed by the same person who receives it) or not. That part of the D.O. is emphatic, you get a double direct object: what item has been washed (the hands, head, car…) and whose item has been washed (the pronoun).
“Quiero me beses los pies”, without the “que”, sounds like it was written by someone who doesn’t speak Spanish; it’s acceptable in a song or poem if there’s no other way to push the line into the meter, but still sloppy songwriting. They could have said, for example, “Me vas a besar los pies” (you’re going to kiss my feet) and the rhyme and meter would have fit.
Does that hold for Mexican Spanish? Because all the signs in the restaurant bathrooms in CA say “lavarse”. I’d be surprised if they were written by ignorant gringos, but maybe…
It holds for mexican Spanish when the verb (or verbal contruction it’s a part of) is conjugated and the person used in the conjugation calls for it. The infinitive would be lavarse, but the construction given (even if it was mixed language) was “you can [wash your hands]”: it’s the “you” that requires the “te”.
Recuerden lavarse las manos - please, remember to wash your hands. The person is the polite second person plural, which takes the same form as the third person plural; the pronoun is se. I’m assuming what you see in lavs is this, probably without the recuerden. It’s an infinitive used as imperative.
Uno puede lavarse las manos - one can wash one’s hands. Impersonal, again the pronoun is se.
Puedes lavarte las manos - you can wash your hands. Second person singular, the pronoun is te.
To clarify, Lavarse isn’t the imperitive. There’s two possibilities here. The words in the brackets can either be written or implied:
(1) [Los empleados deben] lavarse las manos. [Employees must] wash their hands
(2) [Usted debe] lavarse las manos. [You (formal) must] wash your hands
The imperitive in Spanish is Lava te las manos (informal) or Lave se las manos (formal).
You see it both ways in Latin America. For example, on buses they have signs saying don’t throw trash. Both “No botes basura” and “No botar basura” are common.
