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Sobre la expresión 'Eramos doce en la fiesta" en inglés
ناشر الموضوع: Antonio Berbel Garcia
Antonio Berbel Garcia
Antonio Berbel Garcia
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Mar 4, 2023

A student wants to know why the sentence "We were seven at the party" is wrong. I know it should be "There were seven of us at the party".
What is the best way to explain it from a grammatical point of view?
thanks a lot in advance


[Editado a las 2023-03-04 16:15 GMT]
 
philgoddard
philgoddard
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I don't think you can always explain things in grammatical terms Mar 6, 2023

English just says it differently.
'We were seven" is not totally wrong, just less colloquial.

Marijke Singer
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Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
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@Antonio Mar 6, 2023

There + to be and groups of people or objects

https://www.practisingenglish.com/english-grammar/there-is.htm

expressisverbis
 
Antonio Berbel Garcia
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Not really an explanation Mar 6, 2023

So why not "We are seven" from the point of view of prescriptive grammar?
 
Jennifer Levey
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It ain't wrong, so no explanation warranted. Mar 6, 2023

Antonio Berbel Garcia wrote:
A student wants to know why the sentence "We were seven at the party" is wrong. (...)


If I were you, I'd just tell the student there's nowt wrong with the sentence.

What is 'wrong' is your next assertion:

Antonio Berbel Garcia wrote:
I know it should be "There were seven of us at the party".


'should' ought to read 'could'.

JL

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MollyRose
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We were seven ... Mar 6, 2023

... leads one to think that "we" were seven years old. When we read the rest of the sentence in context, we should usually understand that the writer meant, "There were seven of us at the party." Someone not familiar with this Spanish way of saying it, or not very literate in some way, could misunderstand it or wonder what the writer meant by that. It sounds unnatural in English. As M.T.B. de A. said, there is a rule, which corresponds to "Hubo siete de nosotros en la fiesta."

expressisverbis
 


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Sobre la expresión 'Eramos doce en la fiesta" en inglés






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