In English we say
He looks tired.
Which is an accurate way to say this in Spanish?
Se ve cansado.
or
Él parece cansado [EN: He appears tired]
Gracias amigos!
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2Either one is valid– DanielilloCommented Sep 20, 2023 at 23:31
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Se dice 'se lo ve cansado' ('se le ve cansado' si sos leísta). O bien, 'parece que está cansado'– tacCommented Sep 21, 2023 at 1:28
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1 Answer
As @Danielillo commented, both are valid.
As @tac commented, we use to add a pronoun to the first version, either "lo" or "le". Being this second option perfectly valid, and as he said using "le" there, as well as in other situations, is known as "leismo".
All this said, I would like to take the advantage on your question to offer you some variants that you can use depending on your location. Maybe other users can add other variants.
In Andalucía and Extremadura, in Spain, I think that we would use your second option with the improvements also mentioned by @tac but we tend to pronounce it slightly different
Parece que e'tá cansao
We don't pronounce exactly the s sound in "está" and definitively we don't pronounce the d in cansado.
Specifically in Andalucía, we can use this variant
Parece que está reventao
And in Málaga, Andalucía, Spain, you can hear
Parece que está guarnío
Being both "reventao" and "guarnío" synonyms of "cansado" [tired].
Notice that in all examples I've omitted "él" at the beginning. It's not really necessary.
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The original in English could also be the start of "He looks tired (because he is trying to avoid his homework, doing the washing up, ....) so I was think that preceding the option with me might be possible to convey the uncertainty in the speaker's mind about whether he is genuinely tired.– mdeweyCommented Sep 21, 2023 at 13:56
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@mdewey Do you mean "Me parece que está cansado"? I think that the extra pronoun is not adding that uncertainty. For that I would use "Tengo la sensación de que está cansado" [I have the feeling that he's tired]. But if you think that he's trying to fool you to avoid something: "Finge estar cansado" [He pretends to be tired]. O "Quiere parecer cansado (para no fregar los platos)"– RubioRicCommented Sep 21, 2023 at 14:13
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Yes, now you mention it the Tengo la sensación option looks better.– mdeweyCommented Sep 21, 2023 at 15:26
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1@mdewey I've been thinking on your question and apart of the options that I pointed before, I think that for the situation that you described (pretending), the most colloquial way would be: "Se está haciendo el cansado"– RubioRicCommented Sep 22, 2023 at 6:21