OT: Spanish syntax & vocabulary

[Damien Hall]

Wilson posted:

> Title of an Lp from ca.1957:
>
> "Grandes _exitos de_ la Orquesta Aragón"
>
> Title of a contemporary CD:
>
> "Grandes _hits con_ la Orquesta Aragón"
>
> The reason for the use of "hits" with _con_ instead of with _de_
> defeats my meager knowledge of Spanish syntax.

I'm not a native or even very fluent speaker of Spanish either.  But, the
disclaimer out of the way:

Could it be a semantic / pragmatic difference rather than a syntactic one?
_Éxitos de_ etc. would be literally translated 'successes of', and _hits con_,
well, 'hits with'.  So is it possible that the 1957 album is composed of pieces
that have been successes for this orchestra specifically, have helped to make
its name (either original compositions or, which I suppose is more likely,
other pieces that have been popular _when they have played them_);  whereas the
contemporary CD contains pieces of music that were hits in their own right
before the Orquesta Aragón decided to jump on the bandwagon and play them too?

Maybe this is a stretch.

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania

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