Aug
3
¿Te suena la palabra “sendos”?
I was reading something in Spanish this weekend when I came across the word sendos. From the context I could figure out what it meant, but I had never seen this word before. This is a useful Spanish word that means “each one”, or “every single one.” Previously my tendency has been to use “cada uno” to express this idea, but it turns out that “sendos” is an efficient alternative when you want to describe two or more people or things doing/having something.
Here are some real-life examples found in a Spanish text:
Los tres caminantes llevaban sendos paraguas para protegerse de los ladrillos que caían, pero los paraguas se rompieron. (The three hikers were each carrying an umbrella to protect themselves from the bricks that were falling, but the umbrellas got torn.)
Vinieron 200 carniceros con sendos cuchillos. (Two-hundred knife-wielding butchers came. Two-hundred butchers came, each one with a knife.)
What’s the difference between “cada” and “sendos“? Cada can be used both as an adjective (Cada niño tiene su libro) and as a pronoun (Dame uno de cada), where as sendos is an adjective used to describe plural nouns. Consider “sendos” a synonym for “cada uno.” However, if there are only two nouns in the phrase being described, you can translate “sendos” to mean “both.” (Barack Obama se presentó a los europeos con sendas aparencias en Berlin y Paris. Barack Obama introduced himself to Europeans with appearances in both Berlin and Paris.)
August 18th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Can you just say “todos los tres caminantes llevaban paraguas”?
Sorry if that sounds stupid… I haven’t advanced much in my Spanish yet…
August 18th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Hi Natalie,
Yes, what you wrote is another perfectly good option. I’d just add the preposition “de” because of the number in the sentence (“todos de los tres….”) The English equivalent of your Spanish phrase would be “all three of the hikers were carrying umbrellas….”
P.S. By the way, there are no dumb questions when it comes to learning a language, so ask away!
August 18th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Thank you!
November 4th, 2008 at 12:24 am
You shouldn’t be using “sendos” as “ambos” if it doesn’t mean “one for each person/thing”. Its use is justified when you want to precisely assign just one unique thing to a person (or another thing), in an one-to-one relationship:
Mary and Louise bought each one a ring.
Mary y Louise compraron cada una un anillo.
Mary y Louise compraron sendos anillos.
Sandra reminded each of her children about their duties.
Sandra recordó a cada uno de sus hijos sus obligaciones.
Sandrá recordó a sus hijos sendas obligaciones.
There are four tables, each one on one corner of the room.
Hay cuatro mesas, una en cada esquina del cuarto.
Hay cuatro mesas en sendas esquinas del cuarto.