Using article twice when joining two clauses?

Question

I am trying to translate `That's the one that I eat the chicken with'` What I currently have is `Esa es la con la que como el pollo`, which doesn't sound right to me. So I start with the first half of the sentence: `That's the sauce that I eat`. I translate this as `Esa es la salsa que como` / Then suppose that we already know that I'm talking about a sauce. I would say in English `That's the one (that) I eat`, which I translate to Spanish as `Esa es la que como`. Now for the stranded preposition. Take the sentence `That's the sauce that I eat the chicken with`. My translation for this is `Esa es la salsa con la que como el pollo`. Then comes the problem. When I want to do both of these processes; ie. refer to the sauce from a previous sentence without saying the noun 'salsa' explicitly, and move in the stranded preposition, I get my sentence from above >Esa es la con la que como el pollo But the `la con la que` doesn't feel right to me. Can anyone help me translate this properly? Also, if anyone could tell me what role that chunk is playing in the sentence that would be great too? It's like when we use 'quien' as a relative pronoun, but there's no pronoun so I was a bit stuck for what to call it. Maybe it's a 'relative prepositional phrase' or something... Thanks very much!

Answer 1

Hi! I'm not a native speaker so am not 100% sure of the correct translation, but my education and experience tell me that the best phrasing would actually be, Con ésa como el pollo. With that one I eat the chicken.

We really can't always form a parallel translation from English to Spanish in regards to syntax. The truth is that the sentence, "That's the one I eat the chicken with" is incorrect in English. We shouldn't end a sentence on a preposition. "That's the one with which I eat the chicken" is a better choice.

So...in addition to the first option I gave above, Con ésa como el pollo, you could also say, Es ésa con la que como el pollo. It is that one with which I eat the chicken.

Spanish generally tends to preserve the phrasing and grammatical structures that modern English speakers abandoned long, long ago. Where it is now acceptable to change structures and say things like, "That's the one I eat chicken with" in English, you still cannot end a sentence on con in Spanish.

An exception to this that I have heard, however, is when people in English say, "My friend who her mother is a teacher lent me her books" instead of "My friend whose mother is a teacher lent me her books" and, unfortunately, the same thing now occurs in Spanish: Mi amigo que su mamá es profesora me prestó sus libros versus the correct Mi amigo cuya mamá es profesora me prestó sus libros.

I hope this is somewhat helpful! Feel free to message me if you ever want to have a live online session.

Warmly,

Alissa G., M.A. Spanish