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!
