Spanish to Cantonese: having tried a dish is different from just finishing an event
A Spanish compound past does not select one Cantonese particle
Spanish has comido can ask about an eating event, but the surrounding words determine whether the question concerns recent food or an experience at any time. A Cantonese translation must preserve that distinction instead of choosing a particle merely because Spanish uses haber and a participle. The Spanish tense label alone does not identify the intended kind of event.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s grammar material illustrates 你食過醉雞未呀? as asking whether the listener has ever eaten drunken chicken. It labels 過 as experiential. This asks about previous experience with that dish, rather than automatically checking whether the listener has finished the meal currently on the table.
Recent occurrence and previous experience are not interchangeable
The same chapter gives 老闆啱啱出咗去 for the boss having just gone out, labeling 咗 as perfective. The recent time information also appears explicitly in 啱啱. The example is useful because it separates the event’s presentation from the words locating it as just now. One should not assume that the particle by itself contains the entire meaning of recently.
A Spanish question about ever trying a particular dish can be relevant before recommending a restaurant. A Spanish statement about somebody having just gone out instead explains a person’s immediate absence. Both may use compound past forms, but translating them through one undifferentiated completed-past formula would lose what makes each message useful to its listener.
The lesson additionally illustrates a past ongoing event with a time phrase corresponding to at that time and a progressive marker. This shows why an action situated in the past is not necessarily presented as completed. If the Spanish source describes work still in progress at a previous moment, the target should preserve that viewpoint rather than infer completion from past time alone.
Make sure comer is actually about eating
The RAE lists several meanings of comer besides consuming food. It can describe corrosion, taking a piece in a board game or omitting words when speaking or writing. A Spanish source using one of those meanings cannot be translated as a dining experience simply because the Cantonese example contains an eating verb and an experience particle.
This matters for short messages lacking a clear object. A statement about having eaten a dish and a statement about having taken a chess piece may share the same Spanish verb, yet refer to entirely different actions. Establish the noun sense and activity before considering how the Cantonese construction presents its timing or experience.
The RAE conjugation table confirms has comido as a compound form without specifying those lexical senses. Conjugation and meaning therefore need separate checks. Recognizing the source tense is useful, but it does not replace reading the object, time expressions and conversational purpose.
The Cantonese examples retain the traditional characters used by the university resource. They illustrate an experiential question and a recent perfective event, rather than a complete equivalence chart for Spanish past tenses. Preserve what happened, whether the source asks about experience or a particular occurrence, and which words establish its time.
Language references