Todo - part 2

Hi again,

I was half way throuugh the first part of this publication when I realized how much more I had to say about todo, so here's the second part, where we'll see how this word can be used in a similar to "each" or "every".


Todo - Each and every single one of you.

Does this make sense? Can you relate the word "all" with "every" or "each"? I really hope so because it does a lot of sense in my head. It's probably the way we say it in spanish, but gramatically speaking, it makes a lot of sense because all these are working as adjectives in both languages. Let's get into that with some examples.

- Todos/Cada uno de sus enemigos se rindieron cuando sescubrieron su arma secreta.
- All/Each one of his enemies surrendered when discovered his secret weapon.



That trasnlation is as literal as I could do it, and it's put like that for you see that it's possible to swap the spanish versions of all and each as long as you have context. The main difference is the amount of emphasis you put on each one of whatever you're talking about.



- Each/Every employee will receive a year-end bonus.
- Cada/Todo empleado recibirá un bono de fin de año.

We haven't talked about cada yet, but it's pretty much the straight foward translation of each. Although, you might need to say cada uno if you're making emphasis on each one.


Todo - Everything and everyone.

The usage we give to this word is so broad that it's getting hard to actually "classify" its meanings, since they're all related, better said, they're all the exact same idea of totality. It's just that it can be translated into many different words in the english language (again, all of them with the same idea) depending on the role todo is playing in the sentence (adverb, adjective, pronoun, etc). But that's just grammar jargon, and you don't really need it to learn spanish, so let's see more examples.

- Me comí todo porque no quería desperdiciar nada de comida.
- I ate everything because I didn't want to waste any food. 

- Todos quieren saber cuándo vas a regresar.
- Everyone wants to know when are you coming back.

It's common for us Spanish speakers to mistake the words everything and everyone when talking in English because of what you can see in the examples above. We have sort of the same word to express both ideas, while you make clear the distinction between things, animals or persons. Although, we actually have a very subtle way of doing this too, and what we do is to refer as todos to a group of people instead of todo. So there you go, the plural form kind of works as the distinction between everything and everyone, since in Spanish, we don't refer as todo to a group of people... By the way, you can say todos when you're talking about stuff too, not only persons. I hope you get the idea.


Some useful expressions using TODO.


Just check on the internet for Spanish expressions or sayings using todo, there are SO MANY, it's ridiculous. Even though there are hundreds of them, the word todo in them conveys the idea of totality almost every time.

- "¿Estás listo?"
   "No del todo."
- "Are you ready?
  "Not entirely."


- De todas maneras estaré ahí mañana temprano.
- I'll be there tomorrow morning anyway.

"anyway" can be understand as "in any other way", better said, "taking in consideration every other way". I hope this makes sense since I'm trying to translate into english the Spanish core idea of de todas maneras. At least you can see the key word here: every.


- A todo esto, no olvides llamar al médico.
- By the way, don't forget to call the doctor.

This one is more of a fixed phrase, but I guess we could actually understand it if we get a bit abstract and make some effort. It could be easier to see if we use "incidentally", instead of "by the way"... Which is a word you normally drop when telling a story, or when changing the subject of a conversation, you know that. A literal translation of a todo esto could be something like: "now that we're talking about all this stuff..." or "regarding all this stuff.." So there's your key word again.

These three last ones are more like fixed phrasings we use every day, or at least the ones that came up to my mind trying not to think too hard. Same as before, the idea of totality is there, I even tried to show you the key word of each saying in its more or less literal english translation. I hope it helped at least a little bit. See you soon!

Todo - part 1

Hi everyone,

I haven't written anything in weeks, which is terrible since I can actually feel my brain getting rusty... Many ideas came up to my mind while doing the everyday chores, although they'd fall apart as soon as I'd think through them.

We talked about stuff falling apart, or more precisely, breaking stuff apart in a previous post. Let's now look into a word with quite the opposite idea... Not precisely putting stuff back together, but what you get when you do it: a whole, el todo.

Todo means all, but it can also mean every, whole, entire, and even each. That shouldn't be a surprise since todo sounds similar to total, both words having the same origin in the Latin totus, meaning "all, all at once, the whole, entire, altogether". I'll explain the different -but related- meanings of this word, and some common phrases we use in everyday spanish as well.


Todo - The spanish superlative

So... What does "superlative" means? Well, we use superlatives all the time when  we want to express that something is greater than any other possible thing. They're particularly easy to form in the English language since you only have to add the suffix -est to the word being used to describe something (adjective or adverb).

- Mi primo Arturo siempre fue el niño más alto de todos en su colegio.
- My cousin Arturo had been always the tallest of all children in his school.

See how it's much easier for you english speakers to say the tallest, healthiest, dirtiest, nearest, etc. In spanish you have to add the más in front of the characteristic you're describing. It's definitely a bit clunky but that's how we do it. Literally translated would be something like "the most tall", if that makes sense...

The difference here between English and Spanish would be that, you don't really need to say "the tallest of all" don't you? It's more than enough with saying "the tallest", we get the idea. Whereas in Spanish, you kind of need to put the "todos" to emphasize that same fact.

- Pancho come más lento que Bruno, pero Jhonny es el más lento de todos.
- Pancho eats slower than Bruno, but Jhonny is the slowest.

You can see it better here. In spoken Spanish, people would normally say as you see in the example, since we've already said "más lento" once, we have to add the "de todos" to make sure we're talking about the slowest at the end of the sentence.



Todo - The whole, the entire

The way we use this todo is probably the most simmilar to the English version of it. Although is probably more related to "entire" since they both come from Latin... Well, actually from Old French, product of the french domination in england around the XI century.

- Asegúrate de que todo el pollo esté descongelado antes de sazonarlo.
- Make sure the whole chicken is thawed before seasoning it.

- ¿Sabes cómo cocinar un pollo entero en el horno?
- Do you know how to cook a whole chicken in the oven?

The idea is pretty much the same, although I'm not too surentire sound in this context, maybe not very good. And yeah, I could have used the verb bake instead of cook, or even hornear instead of cocinar, but let's not get too fancy about that.
e about how good would the word

- Pasamos el día entero/todo el día tratando de broncearnos en la azotea.
- We spent the entire day trying to get a tan on the roof.

- Este libro debería ser leído por el mundo entero/todo el mundo.
- This book should be read by the entire world.

Both versions are inerchangeable almost every time. You should be able to play with those "el/la ... entero/entera" and "todo/toda el/la ..." constructions by now. It's not that hard as it seems and people repeat them todo el tiempo. Just be careful! You can't say "el tiempo entero"... Why? Well, I don't know, it just doesn't sound right, must be an idiomatic thing. Same with the chicken examples above. You can say both todo el pollo and el pollo entero, but there's a different connotation between them... Let's say you go to the market and you want to buy... ehmm... chicken:

- Un pollo entero por favor. - Un todo el pollo por favor.
- A whole chicken please. - A chicken in its totallity please.  (?)

   GOOD                         WRONG


I hope you can get the feel of it. Definitely a matter of practice and specially, listening a lot to native speakers, specially chicken lovers.

Check the second part of this post here!