Welcome to today’s Learn Spanish Quiz. One of my ideas for Speaking Latino is a series of flashcards to help with learning slang. Always searching for new ideas and with this in mind, I grabbed a box of 1000 Spanish flashcards sitting on the shelf and randomly pulled out a card. Reading the card, my jaw dropped and I ran off to find my wife to share my find. Turns out there’s a translation error ON THE FLASHCARD. Quite frankly, that is obscene. After my find of the incorrect translation on the phrase book I assumed it would be eons before I found a similar error on a second language learning material. It took less than 3 months. Pulled randomly from 1000 flashcards.
So, go ahead and identify the translation error before continuing reading to confirm your answer. Also, there is a potential second error, but it is less clear. Don’t continue until you are ready to see the answers.
Here goes…. ready…. set….
The red circle in the second photo marks the incorrect translation. The correct word is “me recetó” with the word ending in O. Not ending in E as the flash card suggests. Now this may seem to be a minor error, but think for a second the purpose of a flash card. It is to TEACH you a language you do not know. Imagine being partially advanced in your Spanish learning process. Perhaps you know enough to provide the correct answer of recetó even. Then you stumble upon this flash card and spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how this fits into the grammar rules. You would be completely flummoxed.
Now for part two today. This one is a bit trickier and I would like to here opinions below in the comment. In this photo you will notice that “la” and “médica” are circled.
It was pointed out to me that this word is always masculine (médico), even for female doctors. So what’s your vote? Is this the second error on this flash card or more of a stylistic difference that varies by country? What is the word for médica used in your country? Leave me a comment and don’t forget to mention your country.
Read the article (in Spanish) ¿Por qué no se puede decir «la médica»? on La esquina del idioma from El Universo.
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