Autorrect is a bane

But mostly, that’s owing to laziness. I don’t check my work as I should, and I write blog posts on my phone. Autocorrect is especially bad for writing Spanish, as it is English by way of training and functionality on my phone. I should do better/ be better about reading over my work. I was scrolling down my website to remind myself of what I’ve posted and discovered bad autocorrect Spanish in my post “I will become a norteño song“. The worst part is I don’t even know what I meant to say at the time and can therefore not correct it. Let me go grab it and give a little grammar lesson.

I wrote: Quiero ser un rincon soleado / donde me puede amar a mi amado… The first part means “I want to be a sunny corner.” That is fine. But what does the second line mean? I have no idea. If I get a weird conceit in my head one day, it is not generally memorable to me a second day. “Where he can love me” is what the first half of the second line means, but what did I mean by the second part? Was “me” supposed to be “le”? “Le” is not correct there, so how could I have meant that? That’s why I assume autocorrect changed something fundamental that makes the entire expression incomprehensible.

Objects in Spanish are a little different than in English. In English, we’ve blurred the lines between subject and object and no longer use them correctly, but even when we do, we have one form for both direct and indirect. In Spanish, there are different forms, at least with he/she/it: le and lo/la. When you love someone, it is lo or la. However, when you’re dealing with people, you always put an “a” before them, even when “lo amo” = “amo a Juan”. Do you understand what I’m saying? An “a” would normally equate to a “le” but does not in this case. No, I’m not actually writing about any Juan. It’s just a convenient name because every man is named Juan in Spanish. It’s like being Jacob in the Holy Land. I get those calls at the office: “Hello, this is Jacob from the Holy Land. I would like to sell special items in your church.” To which, I say, “Which Jabob from the Holy Land?” as some are vetted by the Bishop and others — who knows?

Oh gosh, I think I figured out what I had intended, and autocorrect is not culpable, as it was in the last comment section, where “cumbia” became “Cumbria.” I probably started writing “donde me puede amar mi amado” and put the phone down and forgot what I was writing and added an “a”. I was (most likely) going for the cheap rhyme soleado/amado, which was why I flip-flopped the subject and verb — to be super poetic. But I’m not sure why the focus was on a lover loving the narrator (redundant, what?), instead of the narrator doing the loving. How selfish. OTOH, this is why I don’t actually write songs or poetry. I don’t have the proper perspective for it. So, it should be donde puedo amar a mi amado or conversely donde me puede amar mi amado.

Now you know a little about Spanish grammar (I hope). And way too much about the sloppy way I write blog posts.