Spanish language Q&A Forum

When talking about forgetting things, these two forms are given:

- olvidar [algo]

- olvidarse" [de algo]

But what about forgetting someone?

Are these two forms then still correct?

In this lesson, peninsular Spanish is specified (however I am in the US and speak Spanish with Cubans, Mexicans, etc., so not only is this sort of new to me, it's not clear how useful it is). From what I've heard & read, there are many differences in the Americas in how the simple and compound past tenses are used (e.g., https://www.scribd.com/document/148697440/El-sistema-verbal-del-espanol-de-America-De-la-temporalidad-a-la-aspectualidad-Quesada-Pacheco-Espanol-actual-75-2001). If we include both peninsular and American (and other world) Spanish speakers, this is quite a range of variants. English speakers have a parallel set of past tenses in went/has gone. Obviously this is a false friend when compared to a specific dialect of Spanish such as the peninsular dialect (although I wonder how perfectly consistent this is across the peninsula). But is the English parallel any more “false” than the Ecuadorian, Peruvian, or Mexican one, relative to the peninsular one? How would a Spaniard respond if an American Spanish speaker consistently used the false English parallel to these tenses, compared to their response to an Ecuadorian, Peruvian, or Mexican speaker who consistently used their own native variant?

Thanks,

Greg Shenaut

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