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Five Minute Study - SPANISH and ENGLISH compared Guía de la gramática inglesa...
En estas lecciones breves se comparan el inglés hablado y coloquial con el español con el fin de ayudar al estudiante a apreciar tanto las diferencias como las similitudes lingüísticas entre los dos idiomas.
Two by two.
The animals went into the ark "two by two" but that's, "de dos en dos" in Spanish (prepositions again!). However, here I'm going to talk about the words "couple" and "pair" and their translations as nouns referring to two things. We say:
He left a couple of days ago Se fue hace un par de días
I've got a couple left in my bag Me quedan dos en mi bolso Me quedan un par de ellos en mi bolso
The false friend of "un par", "a pair" is used only when there are two in a set such as shoes, socks, also in cards and they are probably matching. Where "un par" can mean either matching or just two of something.
I've found two socks in my drawer but they're not a pair. He encontrado / un par de / dos / calcetines en mi cajón pero no son iguales.
He's got a pair of aces Tiene un par de ases
A teacher might say to her / his students:
Can you please work in pairs ( or - in twos ) ¿Podéis trabajar en parejas?
Two people who are together for sentimental reasons:
Hacen una buena pareja They make a handsome couple
Yet when married:
Aquí vive un matrimonio A married couple live here (couple is usually a plural noun in British English)
I leave you with a couple of common uses of par in Spanish:
Antes de limpiar la casa hay que abrir de para en par Before cleaning the house you should open up all the windows
Fernando Alonso es un piloto de Fórmula Uno sin par; no hay nadie que puede ganarle Fernando Alonso is a matchless Formula One driver; nobody can beat him
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