Talk:deber

cuál es la diferencia entre los verbos españoles "deber" y "tener que"?

I added a "deber de" usage example

I am a native English speaker, but I feel that I have a good understanding of the difference between "deber hacerlo" and "deber de hacerlo". There is significant overlap, and you can easily translate both as simply "(person) should do it". Without "de", the phrase "deber hacerlo" is potentially more emphatic and categorical: Debes hacerlo could be equal to You really should do it. With "de" added, it is clearly less categorical: Debes de hacerlo could be equal to You probably need to do it. Maybe not, though. However, you can translate both "deber de" and "deber" with just "should" in English, and without any tone of voice, it will be correct but possibly not as specific as the original Spanish. So "you really should do it" and "you probably need to do it" emphasize very different degrees of need, but "you should do it" is a correct translation for either. But you may have just lost information that was in the Spanish. I gave a usage example (slightly modified from a blog post by a Mexican with all of the context removed) that emphasizes this overlap:

ES: "Debes de viajar por avión, China está muy lejos."

EN: "You should travel by plane, China is very far away or You probably need to travel by plane, China is very far away."

I have two Wiktionary questions, they are not Spanish or English usage questions:

1. Do we really need to add a usage example with the other sense of "deber de", which is for English sentences like this: "They probably already arrived in China, after all, they took a plane." Honestly, I feel this sense is far less common in Spanish. Usually this would be expressed as two conjugated verbs: (first verb indicating how probable it is, possibly with the word "probable" or "muy probable" in Spanish) que (second verb saying what probably happened, or is happening). Both verbs are conjugated, unlike "deber de" constructions. You can even use "deber" in the first verb clause with "debe ser", meaning "it must be the case". Honestly, as a native English speaker, I understand these when they are said, but I tend to express these ideas with "Pienso que" and "Me parece" and "Estoy seguro de que". I tend to do this because I am sure that "estoy seguro de que hayan llegado" expresses my level of certainty and also the second clause does need to be in subjunctive, y me sale muy fluido a la hora de hablar. If I tried to construct a sentence with "deber de", I might be misunderstood. But I hear these sentence, and I think I understand them correctly. Puede ser que no. No sé.

2. Is it okay that I included the word or in italics in the English translation? I think giving two versions of the English translation is extremely helpful for both English and Spanish learners, because the temptation to just use "should" in English every time is strong, and the temptation to just use "deber hacerlo" (without "de") in Spanish is strong. You could do this every single time, but you are missing out on a very common way to express ideas about obligation with different levels of "this is my opinion" and "this is absolutely necessary" and so on. In English, "you really should" and "you probably need to" have both different levels of certainty and also, one sounds like a command and the other sounds like advice or speculation. Both can be "you should", but who feels that you should, and how strongly do they feel this? I am immediately reminded of the song "No Me Importa" by Ha-Ash, where they report strident advice given to them by other people, but they don't care. They use several verbal constructions emphasizing the stridency with which the advice was given, and downplaying the quality of the advice (which they are planning to ignore). In fact, I think they say "me jodes" instead of "me dices" or "me preguntas" or "me mandas". If they are using the verb joder to report the speech of others, they have very low opinion of what the other person was saying. Fluoborate (talk) 19:32, 11 April 2019 (UTC)