Lesson 6 Quiz

Hello everyone,

You all did really well on Lesson 6 quiz, I know it was one of the more challenging ones, thank you for your hard work! Here I wanted to offer some explanation of the three questions that seemed to be the most challenging:

Question #2:

2. Which of the following sets of words are not fully synonymous?

a) manutención de hijos - child support
b) gerente - manager
c) abogada - lawyer
d) seguro médico - medical insurance

The correct answer was c) abogada - lawyer. This is because abogada refers to the gender of the lawyer as specifically female while lawyer could refer to either a man or a woman. Several of you chose option a) manutención de hijos - child support. While it's true that in Spanish the plural form is used (hijos) while in English the term uses the singular form (child), the phrases are synonyms because there are used in exactly the same way and have the same range of meaning. The Spanish phrase manutención de hijos can be used to refer to payments made for just one child, and in the same way child support can refer to financial support for one or for multiple children. Since the usage is the same, they are full synonyms. 

Question #4:

4. Matching - Match the correct relationship of the English verb to the Spanish verb:
(2 points)

suceder  -  to succeed     (false cognate)
moverse - to move           (hypernym)
necesitar - to need           (synonym)
tocar  - to touch                 (hyponym)

Many of you had a difficult time with this matching question, at least the first time you took the quiz. This question helped us to see if you could apply the concepts studied in Lesson 6 to real examples. An explanation of the answers:

- To suceed is a false cognate of suceder. Suceder means to happen, or to occur while to suceed would be expressed as tener éxito in Spanish.

- To move is a hypernym (more general term) of moverse because moverse refers to the moving of body parts while to move could also be translated as mudarse when referring to moving from one place or home to another.

- To need is a synonym of necesitar because they both share the same range of meaning. 

- To touch is a hyponym (more specific term) of tocar because tocar could also be translated as to play when referring to a musical instrument. 

Question #5

5. Which of the following is not a possible translation of this source text?

Source Text: Estoy harta de sus mentiras.

a) I’m satiated with her lies.
b) I’m fed up with his lies.
c) I’m tired of their lies.
d) I’m sick and tired of your lies.

This question proved challenging to many of you. The correct answer was a) I'm satiated with her lies. First, it is important to note that "sus" can be translated as "his", "her", "their", or "your". It is therefore a hypernym of all of those options. So finding which answer was incorrect had to do with the translation of the word hartar. You could find all of these meanings in a dictionary definition of hartar, however, not all of them have the same meaning. In this case, "to be fed up", "to be tired of" and "to be sick and tired of" are all possibilities that have the same meaning and correctly communicate the message of the source text. "To satiate" however, has a different meaning. "To satiate" means "to satisfy an appetite or desire fully". When "hartar" is used with this meaning it would usually be translated as "to stuff oneself". For example: "Me harté de pastel". - "I stuffed myself with cake." It would not make sense to be satiated or full and satisfied with someone's lies, therefore option "a" is not a possible translation of the source text. This is a good example of a case in which the dictionary can cause confusion, since many possible definitions are provided for one word. It is important to ensure that you understand the meaning of each option given in a dictionary entry before deciding which one to use in your translation.