Incorrect dialogue in Lesson 11.6 - CyberSpace (Premium)

Hi all - 

I was going over some older lessons that I had done poorly on, and found this sentence:

"Practicas tú estas palabras."

I had missed it the first time around, and even though I know it is incorrect, I still asked all of my skype partners, from  both Latin America and Spain, and all of them confirmed what I absolutely know - this is completely wrong, it should be

"Tú practicas estas palabras."

I have reported this under the 'feedback' area, and am wondering if anyone else caught it and pointed it out in "feedback."   I did a quick check to see if it had already been posted, but did not find anything.
It really should be fixed ASAP, it is a glaring error.

So....anyone else find it?

Kel

Kelly, why do you think it's wrong?  Why do your Skype partners think it's wrong?  I might be missing something from the context of the lesson, but it's present indicative and so although not as common of a structure, I think it's still correct.  I did a little research and found this at fluentu.com

5. Thanks to Spanish being a very flexible language, many times you will be able to change the word order without making the sentence ungrammatical. As a result, you will have different sentences with practically the same meaning. Use this technique only when you want to put emphasis on a specific sentence constituent:
(Yo) leo libros.
(I read books.)
Libros leo (yo).
(Literally: “Books I read.” Meaning: It is books that I read, not magazines.)
Leo libros (yo).
(Meaning: I read books, I don’t sell them, I don’t burn them, I just read them).

​​Anyways, I'm always interested in learning something new, so let me know why you think it's incorrect.  I certainly could be mistaken in my assessment.
 

Hi He-fay - 

First, I am glad you copied and pasted what you found on that link, because it sent me to the home page, which had absolutely nothing to do with Spanish, lol.  I realize it is in there somewhere, but the main places to go are oil and gas, chemical stuff....it would have taken me a lot of time to find this paragraph you have posted.

Goddamn rocket, I had a whole long paragraph written that took me 45 minutes, and it only posted that.  SO irritating!

I am running late, so I will answer fully when I get back.  

I'm not sure what happened with your post, but I received the whole post in an email notification.  As far as the link goes, I typed it wrong.  I've now corrected it to be fluentu.com.  Sorry about the confusion.  Here's your post followed by some more thoughts of my own fevered brain.

First off,  my issue is that it is inconsistent.  In almost every one of 'extra vocabulary' lessons, Mauricio says some form of "practice these words," and he has always used it correctly, or perhaps I should say in a more common usage of the phrase.  
And there has never been a need to put emphasis on it, the program is "talking" to the person who purchased it, not a group of people needing to single out one person.
If this is technically correct, it still is not correct in the context, he is not saying (to use the examples above) 'Practice the words, don't go read English words,  or "Practice the words, don't slam your computer shut, or quit Rocket  Spanish, just practice the words."

So, I guess it is technically correct when you want to clarify that you need to practice the words, not destroy your computer, lol

But in my opinion, it is wrong, there is no need to use emphasis here.

And....my skype partners immediately wrote/said "no, incorrect."  The reason they said that is, I suppose, because they are native Spanish speakers and do not use this somewhat obscure grammatical form.

What I am trying to say is that, while interesting, the webpage you found that says it is usable is not what we should be learning here.  Imagine if we were studying English, and the course decided to use a more obscure way of saying the sentence, and threw in Shakespearean English.

"You practice these words"  would read "Thee practiceth these w'rds"

​Now my thoughts-
 It's not an antiquated form of grammar.  I didn't mean to imply that.  So the comparison to old English isn't accurate.  The other thing to remember is that it's not a command.  It's simply a statement.

Practicas tú estas palabras. - Present indicative (description-information)
​Tú practicas estas palabras. - Present indicative (description-information)

​Practica (tú) estas palabras. - imperative (command) ​notice the spelling change

​The first two sentences are giving a description of what is happening in the present.  You study these words.  That's what you do - or - That's what you are doing at the moment.  For this reason, the position or inclusion of ​tú ​only changes the emphasis, but doesn't make the sentence any less grammatically correct. (my understanding)

The third sentence is a direct command and almost always ​tú ​is left out.  However, if it's included it follows the verb.  (You) study these words. That is what you are to do or to be doing. Usually in English we leave off the you except for emphasis just as in Spanish.

Here's the link to the exact page in fluentu.com
http://www.fluentu.com/spanish/blog/spanish-sentence-structure/

Here's a different site.
http://www.enforex.com/language/spanish-word-order.html

This page says that the subject can follow the verb but doesn't mention if it's different with pronoun subjects.

In a children's book that I just read, in Spanish, I found two sentences with this structure.

Quedaron al descubierto dos ratones. - preterite indicative
​Son ustedes. - present indicative

Earlier I had read this children's book during my Spanish class to my instructor and she didn't say that the book was wrong.  We did find a mistake earlier in the book, a typo, but as far as the grammar goes, she gave me the very strong impression that it was correct.

​Here in Peru, at least, when someone shows a foto that has him or herself in it, the statement is always "Soy yo."  Once again, present indicative.



​

By chance today was my Spanish conversation group, led by a retired university Spanish professor. I wrote the sentence on the whiteboard as presented by Kelly, and asked if it was grammatically correct or not. The entire conversation was in Spanish, so I might have....okay, I am sure...that I missed some fine details.

But the gist that I got from her was that one could use that construction, but it is pretty unusual. She went on to say that it would be more likely to be used as a question, emphasizing the person to whom the question was directed: 

¿Practicas tú estas palabras? 
Do YOU practice these words?

I consider this to be one of the downsides of any online language course: sometimes the material confuses the student, and there is no teacher standing in front of you to ask. In an ideal world the person who constructed each lesson would be on standby to answer questions generated by his or her lesson, but in an ideal world I would already be native-speaker fluent in Spanish!

My sentiments exactly about online courses.  They have there good side, self and flexible scheduling, but have the down side of no human instructor.

​Interesting insight from your instructor.  It would also be interesting to know how this particular question on word order varies between countries.

Hi guys!
I am sorry I did not come back sooner, I was getting no e-mail notifications that the conversation was continuing, plus I was taking the time to find all of my skype partners and run it by them, being totally neutral about it, not asking if it was right or wrong, just actually working it into the conversation, and every single one of them corrected me.

So....He-fay!  
First, I am so glad you got the full e-mail, I was so irritated that my post had been cut off, argh.
 
Anyway, I was heading back here with that report, and am only now reading you and Dan mulling it over two weeks ago, and now I want to try it out on my partners as a question....this would be interesting.

Also, just for the sake of offering more information, and since you were curious about how this word order would vary between countries, my partners are from:

Lima, Peru
Tarragona, Spain
Murica, Spain
Sevilla, Spain
Loja, Ecuador
​Bariloche, Argentina
Costa Rica
Buenos Aires, Arg.
Calama, Chile
Mexico City
Venezuela 
Colombia and
Uruguay

So, while not a huge swath of Spanish speaking areas, I think it is a decent enough variation to try the sentence out, and when I said it...... Yikes!
I was immediately corrected by every single person. (I did not want to tell them I was running a test, so I had to suffer through feeling like a dummy, lol)

Although, He-fay -  you saying  "when someone shows a foto that has him or herself in it, the statement is always "Soy yo." " - that, to me, makes a lot of sense insofar as emphasis. 

So, I back off on my extremely strong opinion that it is 100% wrong.....It looks like it is correct in the "book learning" side of Spanish, but doesn't  really translate into the "conversation learning" side of Spanish, maybe?  What do you guys think?

Like I said, I will test it out in question form, and see what kind of response I get.
However, I will have to confess to my buddies that I am using them as guinea pigs, I don't want to suffer through being an idiot again, hahaha 

Thank you both for your input, I really, really appreciate it.  And thanks for the links, too. Any and all help and information when I stumble across something confusing....I am beyond thankful for it, even if my original statement is proven wrong.
I am here to learn, not to be "right."  :D

Chao!
Kel

Oh, and P.S.
My Old English comparison was a bit of a joke - I knew I was exaggerating, but I could not think of a good comparison so I went 'Saturday Night Live' with it.