Práctica tú.

I have encountered this sentence several times in the Platinum Plus course and always wonder why it is structured this way. Práctica alone conveys the message, "you practice." I can see how this might seem more of a command than is intended, and maybe the personal pronoun is added to soften it up. But why does the subject follow the verb, rather than simply "tú práctica"? Is is just an idiomatic expression?

Good question. I also noticed - What do you mean? translated as ¿Que quiere decir?. I would have translated it as What do you want to say?.

Here's another one. Margaret was telling me last night about the Mexican chocolate drink just hit the spot. I heard her say. "El chocolate cayo something something"

Also last night Maria was observing what Margaret was trying to say. "I was running around like a chicken with the head cut off". Instead, she said "I was running around like a headless chicken" in Spanish", Of course, I did not get it. Maria thought it was funny.

Hi guys,

I would need to see the whole phrase as something doesn't sound right. "Practica tu inglés en línea" - a command as you mention but the "tu" (not "tú") would refer to "your" something or other (as opposed to "you"). "Practicas tú..." would make it the start of a question (much like we might say, "Have you something to say?"). "Práctica" with the "á" makes it a noun. I don't think a "tú" can work after that.

Two phrases from the course. "Mauricio me cae bien pero no me gusta Mauricio." - I like / get along well with Mauricio but I don't love him. "Puede ser que comió algo que no le cayo bien?" - Maybe he ate something that didn't agree with him? "El chocolate cayó bien." - I would translate this as something like, "The chocolate went down really well." (like, boy did it taste good!)

¡Saludos!

p.s. I would not even attempt to tackle translating "running around like a chicken with its head cut off"! I have pushed the envelope many times in French, such as trying to say "it's raining cats and dogs" and came out with the equivalent of "it's crying hamsters and gerbels." A subtle mistake on my CV transformed "Perfectly bilingual" into "perfectly two-tongued" I found out as the secretary went up and down the hallway exclaming to all my unique gifting. Whenever I've gotten together with my old work chums from Paris, it's only a matter of time before "out comes the list" of all my classic sayings and we all howl with laughter... :-)

Steven: "Práctica tú" is the entire sentence. In the lesson the student is being told, "you practice." It is in the additional vocabulary in lesson 12.6.

Hola a todos,

Practica tú  is the informal command of practicar, no accent above the a : practica. The object pronoun follows the verb with affirmative commands. Compre Ud. el libro. Perhaps that is the case here?.

Saludos,

Ricardo

Ricardo: So are you saying that in the imperative mode an object pronoun always follows the conjugated verb?

Also, my dictionary returns "práctica" (with the accent) when I enter practice, but as a noun. When I look at a conjugation table for practicar I see practica (no accent) for 2nd person/singular in the imperative mode. That is why you corrected my spelling? (thanks for doing so, by the way). In going back to the lesson that prompted my orginal question, I see it is NOT accented.

Dan

Hola Dan,

The object is optional and I would imagine adds emphasis. Yes, I corrected it as this seemed to be a command.

Saludos,

Ricardo