Excerpt from feature story:Sentir celos cuando otra mujer guapa mira a tu hombre o lo saluda cariñosamente es normal, pero husmear su celular o ponerte peluca y gabardina para ir a espiarlo cuando sale con sus amigos, está mal.

Source: Los Tiempos of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Retrieved March 9, 2013.

Suggested translation: Feeling jealous when another beautiful woman looks at your man or affectionately greets him is normal, but snooping around his cellphone or putting on a wig and raincoat in order to go spy on him when he leaves with his friends is bad.


Key grammatical issue: This sentence has five infinitives (sentir, husmear, poner, ir and espiar), three of which are used as subject nouns and two of which are used as prepositionalobjects. This shows how an infinitive, although usually thought of as the most basic form of a verb, also has some characteristics of a noun.

The first infinitive, sentir, is functioning as the subject of a sentence. As in this case, when translating a Spanish infinitive that functions as a noun, it is common to use the English gerund, that is, the "-ing" form of the verb, which can also function as a noun (as "feeling" does in the translation). The same thing is done here with husmear and poner.

It is also possible to translate the Spanish infinitive as an infinitive in English, although this makes for a more formal usage: "To feel jealous ... but to snoop around his cellphone or to put on a wig ... is bad."

Ir functions here as the object of the preposition para. "Para + infinitive" is a common way of saying "in order to + verb." Espiar also is the object of a preposition, in this case a.

"Ir a + verb" is a very common way of saying "to go + verb." Although ir a frequently functions as a kind of future tense, that isn't the case here.

Other notes on vocabulary and grammar:

• This sentence shows the correct use of otra (or otro). It is incorrect to say un otro or una otra to mean "another."
• Although the usual meaning of hombre is "man," in some contexts hombre, like its English equivalent, can mean "husband."
• Spanish often forms adverbs by adding the suffix -mente to singular feminine adjectives. So cariñosamente is the adverbial form of cariñoso, which means "loving" or "affectionate."
• The phrase "ponerse peluca" can be used to mean "to put on a wig." It is also acceptable to say "ponerse una peluca." Ponerte is used here rather than ponerse because the writer is speaking to the reader, and te is the object pronoun meaning "you."
• In the singular form, celo usually refers to enthusiasm or zeal, although it can also refer to the mating time (heat or rut) of some animals. But the plural form celos usually refers to envy or jealousy. Phrases using celos include tener celos (to be jealous) and dar celos (to make jealous).
• Espiar can mean either "to spy" or "to spy on." Since no preposition is needed to say "on" here, the pronoun lo can be attached to the infinitive. The pronoun te is attached to poner.
• The final comma was probably placed in the sentence because the sentence has a complex subject and the first part of the subject (husmear) is significantly separated from the verb. (English writers sometimes make the same mistake.) However, such a use of the comma is condemned by the Royal Spanish Academy, which says that normally no comma should come between the subject of the sentence and its verb. This incorrect use of the comma should not be imitated.
• The final two words of the sentence could have been "es malo" with no translatable difference in meaning. "Está mal" seems to be more common than "es malo" to say "it is bad," depending on the region.