Saturday, December 13, 2008

Tengo que decir que te tengo por un genio. = I have to say that I think you are a genius.

Tener que = To have to (This one's another case of a Spanish phrasal verb having an English phrasal verb as a translation.)

Tenerse por = To think; to be of the opinon

P.S. Thanks La Traductora and Erica for leaving other examples of Spanish phrasal verbs in the comments section under the previous post.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

this shouldn't be tenerse but tenerlo a alguien

Unknown said...

Hello i-m from Mexico, then Spanish is my native language and I only want to tell you that it's incorrect to say: Te tengo, instead we use Yo pienso que. Saludos!

Carloz said...

Thanks, but although it may not be used in your part of the Spanish-speaking world, it is apparently used in some parts. From the Collins Spanish English dictionary:

tenerse por ⇒ "se tiene por muy listo" "he thinks himself very clever", "he thinks he's very clever".

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/spanish-english/tenerse-por

AnĂ³nimo said...

Carloz you are so right, "tenerse por" is actually used in some places. But if you wanna say "I have to say that I think you are a genius", you can just say "Pienso que eres un genio". I can only think about "tener a alguien por" being used in Spain, but in Latin America we just "think someone is something"!

Carloz said...

Gracias, AnĂ³nimo.