Give someone a piece of your mind là gì
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"To give someone a piece of your mind" literalmente es expresarle a alguien tu opinión acerca de una tema, pero tienes razón - normalmente se usa cuando una persona está enojada por algo y se quiere quejar con otra. Es más, yo diría que una traducción más o menos equivalente sería "quejarse amargamente" o "ponerle a alguien en su lugar"...
O sea que si yo quiero decir 'lo puse en su lugar (a él)', ¿podría decir, 'I give him a piece of my mind'? Lo cuál también querría decir ¿'me quejé amargamente con él'? Saludos
Sí, dependería del contexto en que se usa la frase: un cliente que se queja con un proveedor podría decir "I gave him a piece of my mind", pero lo mismo podría decir tu jefe cuando haces algo mal y te da una "peinadita"...
Lo bueno es que no tengo jefe Muchas gracias, Alisterio. He aprendido algo nuevo. Saludos
I think Pauches found the answer already: cantarle las cuarenta. To me, that is the closest natural Spanish equivalent. And to me, to give someone a piece of my mind is not the same as to put someone in their place. The latter means "to tell someone that he is not as important as he thinks," whereas the former means "to tell someone my opinion in a very direct, often angry, manner." "John was acting like a big shot, but the boss came in and put him in his place, and then gave the rest of us a piece of his mind for laughing at John."
This is ok, but remember too that argentinean as a "language" is not as many latinamerican languages, what I mean is that I don't know which other latinamerican country uses and understands our argentinean phrase "cantarle los cuarenta"; and that's why one may try to give it a similar, or even the closest, meaning possible... In my opinion "put someone in (its) place" is not just telling him/her he's not that important, it's a way of referring to that person's mistakes or missbehaviours... Hope I being clear enough and thanks a lot for all your help!
that Then I'm afraid you are misunderstanding the phrase. A person's "place" is the station the person occupies in society, a group, a business, etc. If that person tries to move to a higher station, someone might try to put the person is his place. Of course, the phrase is used in a broader meaning of general denigration, but that is the basic meaning. By the way, you can't say "put someone in its place," since "someone" refers to humans, and "its" refers to non-human things. put someone in his/her place put something in its place put someone in its place
Thanks for the claryfing idea about the phrase!!! And don't worry, I know the difference and the correct way of using "its" and "her/his", I'd just written it that way to avoid writing "his/her" every single time, that's why I wrote it in () |
