# Spanish question: present tense **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 25, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703 "2011-04-25T20:23:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/41 "2011-04-27T15:42:40Z")
> [@bardos](#): > > if needed, here’s this… to help you as a teaching guide for your native Spanish speakers. > > In English there are 3 main ways to speak about the future: > > **Present continuous** : (for arranged plans.) > > “We’re going to Mexico next week”. (tickets bought) > > **Future simple** (the will/shall future) > > spontaneous decisions: “Great, I’ll get some tickets too”. (That aforementioned Mexico trip) > promises: I’ll send you a postcard when I arrive". > predictions: Well probably meet some cool people in Mexico. > > **Intentional Future** (going to future): (personal intention) > I’m going to study Chemistry tonight. > > The above is a simplification, but it does serve as a good guide. Of course, there are other tenses and structures used for the future as well. (present simple, future continuous, future perfect…) I know all of those! :eek: I wouldn’t pass Linguistic Analysis of English without that knowledge. But it makes you a better teacher to know some of the rules of other languages when you’re evaluating students. Comparative charts and explanations work. When I’m fumbling through Hebrew, I have a guide that can help me compare rules because it’s tailored to American English speaking students…so I’m better equipped to catch mistakes. If you just walk into a classroom and hear, “Do it this way, this way, this way, and this way because of this rule, this rule, this rule, and all rules will be broken sometimes”, it’s frustrating. I’d rather say, “This is the rule in English. In Spanish, you do it this way. In English, we write it this way. Sometimes it’s broken, but it’s good to start here.” Everyone activates their L1 when learning L2, but you will do better when the instructor is familiar with your L1 word order and verb rules. I don’t teach just Spanish speakers, but because I live in Denver, that’s the majority. I notice my students saying, “We will be having” a lot. “We will be having a test.” [taking a test] “We will be having homework.” [‘having’ can be omitted] “I will be having to go the dentist.” [need to or will need to] “She is having to go to the office.” [needs to go/was sent to] again, I don’t meant to hijack the thread. There are just a few things that trip me up. Edit: I’m a social studies teacher. We write every day, but I don’t teach English…officially…I just teach English…while teaching Civics…and my ass depends on their CSAP scores. I’m getting an MA in Applied Linguistics, but I want to drop the program and shoot for a PhD in cognitive/relative. I know\* my\* English rules. If the bureaucracy of teaching didn’t suck so bad, I’d never leave. But it does, so off to research I go. ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/42 "2011-04-27T15:54:11Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > “We will be having homework.” [‘having’ can be omitted] We will be homework? ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/43 "2011-04-27T15:55:35Z")
“To have” is “tener”, which as you noticed is a very commonly used verb, more commonly used than in English, and as your translation notes, different meanings. What I still don’t get is what you wrote after quoting me. I don’t get the purpose or reasoning why you wrote that. What were you trying to point out, ask, or comment about? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/44 "2011-04-27T19:49:54Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > “To have” is “tener”, which as you noticed is a very commonly used verb, more commonly used than in English, and as your translation notes, different meanings. > > What I still don’t get is what you wrote after quoting me. I don’t get the purpose or reasoning why you wrote that. What were you trying to point out, ask, or comment about? I think I get it. Maybe I can be clearer. That was a list of common mistakes made by his students. He wants to know why those are common mistakes. What is the common thread behind these mistakes? How did you learn to not make them? Is there some rule he can teach his students that will help? ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/45 "2011-04-27T20:45:41Z")
**BigT** , that’s what I thought also, but wasn’t sure. Those are common mistakes because they’re talking English but thinking Spanish conjugation rules and verb meanings. The common thread is they’re using perfectly acceptable Spanish (or Portuguese) rules and applying them to English, with bad results. “We will be having a test” translate roughly to “Vamos a tener un examen”. “Tener” in this case is working in place of “take”, “we will have a test” instead of “we will take a test”. Take, in Spanish, is tomar (also to grab), which is mostly used when talking about physically grabbing something. It can also mean “to drink”. Going by the future form I mentioned above, they’re using “will be” as “ir +a”. “I will be having to go to the dentist” again is using the similar construct, and would translate as “voy a tener que ir al dentista”, “tener” meaning in this case “to need”. “Tener que” is a construct meaning “have/need to (do something)”. There are a couple of things going on. Sometimes they use -ing endings thinking that is the infinitive form. Sometimes, sadly, that is how Google translator and other online translators work. They type their (perfectly correct) Spanish phrase with clauses and a future tense that is not the simple future tense, and they get back the stuff that **Citizen** wrote. Not knowing better, they think that is correct. I started learning English at a young age, so I guess the grammar rules of no language were set in stone in my mind then. Thus, it is somewhat easier for me (I think) to separate English and Spanish rules (most of the time). Really, I think this is something that should be stressed, as in “the rules you followed in Spanish (or X language) do not apply here, leave them behind, ignore them, do not use them”. They’re trying to use any rule that they learned to make transition to a new language easier, but this doesn’t always work. That rule (the ir + a + infinitive verb) makes no sense in English, they need to know this. That is their common mistake. They need to not confuse their minds more and perhaps it’ll dawn on them that future tense in English is amongst the easiest conjugations to form (at least at the beginning). ---
**Author:** ![turtledove\_river](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@turtledove\_river](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/turtledove_river)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/46 "2011-04-27T22:05:08Z")
Wow, good thing spanish is my native language. I don’t have to think about it, it just comes out… > [@Carol\_the\_Impaler](#): > > For example, I was taught that to say “she is eating a bowl of grapes” would be: > > Ella come un tazón de uvas. > > But Live Mocha translates it as: > > Ella se está comiendo un tazón de uvas. > > Which is correct? Both are correct, but I would use the second one… _se esta comiendo_… It just more casual, and it’s the standard for Mexican spanish. But I would replace _tazon_ for _plato_. ---
**Author:** ![Carol\_the\_Impaler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Carol\_the\_Impaler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carol_the_Impaler)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/47 "2011-04-27T23:46:38Z")
Muchas gracias a todos. (Right? I didn’t just call your mother a hamster, did I? I kid.) As usual, a simple question in the Dope gets you a ton of very helpful info and context. Seconding the question: does anyone know a good free online Spanish course? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/48 "2011-04-28T00:00:56Z")
> [@treis](#): > > For example, in English it’s fine to say “I am living in Chicago”… It sounds just a bit awkward. It’s not quite the same as saying “I live in Chicago”. It makes it sound temporary when you say “living”-- as though you are emphasizing that you haven’t always lived there, or don’t intend to live there sometime in the future. So, I think that phrase is a bit more like its Spanish equivalent than you say. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2011, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/49 "2011-05-01T04:36:05Z")
I think that depending upon with whom you’re speaking, it doesn’t really matter which way you speak. In general, the English-speaking population of the United States speaks horrible English (but, importantly, mutually intelligible), and so the Spanish-speaking population of whatever country also speaks horribly (but of course, mutually intelligible). I also hate to say that in English, university was so casual that language skills were unimportant, either due to foreign instructors, or forgiving instructors, that it all comes down to mutual understanding. ---
**Author:** ![AliceP](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de0a6/32.png) [@AliceP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AliceP)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2017, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/50 "2017-05-29T18:50:40Z")
> [@Carol\_the\_Impaler](#): > > I have a question about the present tense in Spanish. I am refreshing my Spanish skills with [Live Mocha](http://www.livemocha.com/sihp). But the Spanish they teach seems to be different than the Spanish I learned in college and at a language school in Mexico. For example, I was taught that to say “she is eating a bowl of grapes” would be: > > Ella come un tazón de uvas. > > But Live Mocha translates it as: > \ > > Also, why the use of “se”? livemocha is not available anymore, try [https://www.lingq.com/](https://www.lingq.com/) ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2017, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/51 "2017-05-29T18:53:21Z")
This thread is now about the past tense. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2017, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703/52 "2017-05-29T18:58:05Z")
NM. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/spanish-question-present-tense/579703.md?page=2)