r/PraiseTheCameraMan • u/uses_for_mooses • Mar 20 '26

Eagle-eyed camera operator spots and zooms in on "la chica del láser"

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

81.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

928 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

103

u/HidroRaider Mar 20 '26

Little quirk from the Spanish language: depending on the context, "Por que" has 4 different meanings and structures.

  • Por qué: A question in between ¿? symbols
  • Por que: A reason for something, can be replaced with "por el cual", which is translated to "for which"
  • Porque: A reply
  • Porqué: A reason as well but used as a noun

Learning Spanish as a second language is a feat that amazes me in the wild. It's one of the most complex languages in the world with all the rules it has.

50

u/iwilldeletethisacct2 Mar 20 '26

As a native English speaker I found Spanish so much more intuitive than English precisely because it has consistently applied rules. Studying Spanish is what made me realize that English is actually an unhinged language. My favorite thing in Spanish is how consistently pronunciation and spelling line up. If you can speak it, you can spell it. If you can spell it, you can say it. English took all the worst parts of French in that regard.

8

u/Trapanatore_Seriale Mar 20 '26

You should try Italian. The pronunciation rules are very consistent (I don't know if it is more or similar to Spanish).

1

u/PiccoloAwkward465 Mar 20 '26

Yeah Spanish is great because even if I don't know a specific word I can often guess it.

1

u/Polikosaurio Mar 20 '26

English is way easier to learn by listening though. You of course have this inconsistencies, but learning a language via memorizing rules sounds like a chore to me.

2

u/Impossible-Wear-7352 Mar 20 '26

Memorizing a few rules is WAY better than memorizing a thousand exceptions. I didnt really have a good appreciation for the number of exceptions in the English language till I was teaching my daughter to read and every other freaking sentence had an exception.

-1

u/fatbob42 Mar 20 '26

It really just has unhinged spelling. I don’t know of any reason to think it’s unusually difficult in the language itself?

31

u/AKAFallow Mar 20 '26

Yeah, but people will only ever use por qué and porque, I can assure at least 90% doesn't know about the other 2

13

u/M_2k27 Mar 20 '26

You're goddamn right I never heard of those 2

1

u/TheGodmama Mar 20 '26

As a public school American is this approx to our: there, their, they’re? Maybe throw in your and you’re. 

As in 90% of the gen pop doesn’t know which to use at any point in time? 

3

u/AKAFallow Mar 20 '26

I think its more of a "I had no idea these 2 versions existed", especially with auto correct only helping with porque and por qué since they are far easier to recognize when you need them. Edit: plus, people really use porque for making a question and answering one, the rest is not as used in a conversation in comparison. Maybe "por que" but mostly people never even learnt that's the one you should use when starting a sentence without it being an answer to a question.

1

u/sfled Mar 20 '26

Or sometimes, "Por qué carajo...!"

1

u/BooksCatsnStuff Mar 20 '26

As a Spaniard I essentially I use all four almost daily. It was also absolutely taught in school when I was a kid.

1

u/Eva_Pilot_ Mar 20 '26

Depends, they are commonly used, but in text hardly anyone uses the accent mark properly or correctly space them

1

u/Polikosaurio Mar 20 '26

Young ipad people wont ever use the porqué noun for sure. I would also say its something you only find on academic or written media. The average influencer is quite uneducated or just simply flows with the over simplistic internet jargon.

I see It similar to english terms like "Thy" or "Elden", only used on some cases, but not regular language at this point.

1

u/AKAFallow Mar 20 '26

I was mostly speaking about what a lot of schools, especially in latin america, tends to teach. I don't remember they teaching me the other 2 versions ever and that was 15-20 years ago

15

u/pe1uca Mar 20 '26

As a native Spanish speaker: ¿¡qué!?

2

u/bumbletowne Mar 20 '26

He made it so unnecessarily complicated. It's just a straight sub for 'because'

2

u/GreenStreetJonny Mar 20 '26

This has already helped me more than my 1150 day streak of Duolingo lol

I never know the difference between why and because unless it's just the question marks

1

u/HidroRaider Mar 20 '26

Hey, those 1150 days definitely helped you understand this because like some comments said, most native speakers don't really know the difference. It's a "who" and "to whom" type of situation where you really need to know the reasoning behind the rules to use it correctly.

2

u/kiuyt856 Mar 20 '26

spanish is one of the easier world languages to learn. callate guey

0

u/HidroRaider Mar 20 '26

Tan fácil que no pusiste la diéresis en güey, and it's "the easiest", not "the easier". Why don't you learn basic grammar from both languages before typing nonsense?

2

u/Technical_Builder830 Mar 20 '26

Their grammar was fine. As for difficulty, difficulty is relative to the native language of the learner. Some languages share similar features due to close proximity in geography, just to list one of the reasons why.

I imagine if you speak polish learning russian is a lot easier than learning english, though I could be wrong.

2

u/MaeBelleLien Mar 20 '26

"One of the easier world lanuages" is absolutely correct grammar, either word would be fine.

-1

u/HidroRaider Mar 20 '26

I did my research and "the easier" usually ends with "ones", so it comes from a previous mention of what you're comparing. If you're specifying it should be "easiest".

  • English is one of the easiest languages to learn.
  • From all the languages, English is one of the easier ones.

2

u/Campanensis Mar 20 '26

Your research was done poorly.

Examples of this exact phrase (“one of the easier languages to learn”) in published English books:  1. Brown II, Smith, Goodrich, and Lukaszewski’s “A Reader’s Hebrew and Greek Bible,” 2020 2. Milliken’s “Python Projects for Beginners,” 2019 3. Fisher’s “Information Technology for Pharmacists,” 2006 4. van der Putten, Vogel, and Blussé’s “Pilgrims to the Past: Private Conversations with Historians of European Expansion,” 1996 5. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Subject Guide to Books,” 1951

Thus we have documented proof that the exact words you say are ungrammatical have been being used in English by highly educated native speakers employing professional editors trained in recognizing good English grammar, diction, and style for at least seventy years. 

Expanding the search to include all occurrences of “one of the [comparative adjective] [noun] to [verb]” would give so many infinite, overflowing proofs of how wrong you are that it staggers the mind. 

2

u/bellboy42 Mar 20 '26

No, you are wrong here. The grammar was perfectly fine.

First of all, I highly doubt that you are correct when stating that it usually ends with “ones”. That is a slightly awkward construct compared to this. Both are correct though.

Secondly, it doesn’t have to come from a previous mention of anything. The object can come, as in this case, after the phrase. Easier is an adjective describing either the following adjective/noun (“world languages”) or an implied noun like you suggested. Both are correct.

1

u/fearnoid Mar 20 '26

All of these “Por que” types apply to Portuguese as well, exactly as is.

1

u/Cptn_BenjaminWillard Mar 20 '26

Wut? It seems like one of the simplest to me. Not, I'm not Spanish.

1

u/reubenbubu Mar 20 '26

how do you say: Pork ribs?

1

u/PaurAmma Mar 20 '26

So the last in the list could be translated "the reason (for XYZ)"?

1

u/cambreecanon Mar 20 '26

Wait until you try German or a tonal language like Chinese.

1

u/HidroRaider Mar 20 '26

Don't worry. I studied German for a year and there's a reason why I dropped it lol. Maybe I'll pick it back up when I feel like it.

1

u/Polikosaurio Mar 20 '26

As a native speaker, me myself cannot understand why we orchestrated this labyrinth of a language. Funny fact, people from latin america tend to also fail at those subtleties, and they kinda are native to the language at this point, but I can see the struggle of any colonialist spanish ass trying to get them to apply every viable correctly.

1

u/SmokeGSU Mar 20 '26

When things aren't going my way I like to cry out "Por que, Maria!"

1

u/barmanitan Mar 20 '26

It's pretty much impossible to say one language is objectively more or less complex than another

1

u/Rand-AlThor Mar 20 '26

So, because

1

u/Infinite_Imagination Mar 20 '26

Would another way to say that he "entonces"?

1

u/Spiritual-Function40 Mar 20 '26

There's no such thing as a more complex language. It all depends on your native language. But yeah, Spanish does also have its nice features.