Spanish: Te espero abajo

[bobber501]

Hi, I was confused on translating this sentence to Spanish--
I'll be waiting for you downstairs.
The translation I got was Te espero abajo. I thought that it should be Voy a esperar para tu abajo. I'm confused on where the Te and espero came from.

What does Te mean?

[Querneus]

Hi, I was confused on translating this sentence to Spanish--
I'll be waiting for you downstairs.
The translation I got was Te espero abajo. I thought that it should be Voy a esperar para tu abajo. I'm confused on where the Te and espero came from.

What does Te mean?

"Voy a esperar para tu abajo"... That is so Arabic! (سأنتظر حتى أنت تحتُ, or whatever عامية equivalent you prefer)

English just happens to usually use "to wait for somebody", while in Spanish, an equivalent of "to await somebody" is generally used. Esperarlo 'to wait for it', esperar el evento 'to wait for the event', esperar a alguien 'to wait for somebody' (with "a" because the object is a person/human).

"Te espero abajo" is literally "I await you downstairs". And it's ambiguous on whether I'll be downstairs, or I expect you to be downstairs. Because the present tense can mean the present or future, given a context it can mean "I'll be waiting for you downstairs", but in another context, "I'm waiting for you downstairs".