iguanamon wrote:AllSubNoDub wrote:...Lastly, I'll mention that this HP sentence in particular, gave me a lot of difficulty just when I thought I was on a roll.A lot of the words could be guessed or were shaky, but in my Anki deck already. The thing that broke it was "son" - I had never heard of this noun which my brain (and google translate) kept trying to infer as the verb "to be". I guess it means a pleasant sound, especially in relation to music. If I were extensively reading, this whole thing would have gone over my head.
- La mazmorra estaba llena de cientos de personas transparentes, de color blanco perla. La mayoría se movían sin ánimo por una sala de baile abarrotada, bailando el vals al horrible y trémulo son de las treinta sierras de una orquesta instalada sobre un escenario vestido de tela negra.
- The dungeon was full of hundreds of pearly-white, translucent people, mostly drifting around a crowded dance floor, waltzing to the dreadful, quavering sound of thirty musical saws, played by an orchestra on a raised, black-draped platform.
Yeah, whenever I think I've got anything down in a language, something else will come along to knock me down a peg too. Son (as a noun) is just a general term for a "sound" usually associated with music. In Cuba, "son" is used to denote a genre of music as well. As always, context is key. Good job.
Yes, the Cuban Son thing popped up and I found it really interesting! Then I found out there was Mexican Son too, among others. Honestly, where have I been? It reminds me of when I did a lot of reading on Santería (in English) and how interesting I found all the syncretic differences and similarities that took place among the Yoruba diaspora. I'm definitely going to have to read up on all this in Spanish. Cuba is such an interesting and (at least to me) somewhat mysterious place.
I'm really surprised that "son" doesn't have its own entry under "sound" on SpanishDict, as I have no idea what else it could be translated as. Score 1 for monolingual dictionaries (the RAE definition was simple to understand and right there, easy to find).