CarlyD wrote:I'm sorry, vogeltje. I didn't post there because my Spanish isn't at a level where I was comfortable saying if it was correct or not, so I was hoping someone from this group who was much closer to fluent would know.
After I posted that I remembered all the signs I've seen where they do use the infinitive--"NO FUMAR"--so I'm wondering if the infinitive is a more formal version.
I've gone round and round looking for the correct way to ask my dog "what are you barking at?"--apparently there aren't a lot of Spanish guides on how to talk to your pet, lol.
(Edit: I was saying ¿a qué ladras? but I'm also seeing dar ladrado and estar ladrado.)
I think that you can talk how you want with your dog. My dog doesn't mind which language, he is multilingual, and if my versions of the foreign langauges are wrong, my dog doesn't know or doesn't mind.
dogs love you and they don't care about mistakes or judge you like the humans.
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but of course if you want to be accurate in the foreign langauges, then you have to learn the accurate phrases, and I'm sorry if my charts were not accurate. I deleted them.
Yes, you can command using the infinitive, but it feels more impersonal, but it's personal to command your dog, so I expect that in Spanish it would be the imperative command.
Your example is a question, not a command. I'm not sure about the preposition in Spanish if it's a, but you can say (I think!! **I'm not a native speaker and my Spanish is elementary)
¿porqué ladras? or ¿porqué estás ladrando?" = why are you barking?
yoru other examples:
estar ladrando means to be barking