Thread: Translating "endangerd species" into spanish

Hi all, I do nature outreach programs at schools and I'm making a vocab sheet in spanish of some of the vocab from the lessons for the kids who don't speak english well. I want to translate the phrase "endangered species," and I've found a few different possibilities which I think are different technical differentiations, but I want the most commonly used and general phrase that a kid might have heard before.

So these are what seem like the two likely possibilities: "una especie amenazada" and "una especie en peligro de extinción"... which would be better for my purposes, or is there another phrase I should use? (oh, and if regionality matters, we're talking about Latin American Spanish, lots from the Dominican Republic and then other kids from all over Latin America). Thanks!

Hello geegollygosh,


In Mexico, we call them especies en peligro de extinción.

Xóchitl

Thanks! I'll use that one.

okay, tengo mas preguntas-- cuáles de esas frases son más usadas en america latina?

food chain-- 'la cadena trofica' o 'la cadena alimentaria'?

food web-- 'la red trofica' o 'la red alimentaria'?

predator-- 'predador' o 'depredador'?

gracias!

That was fast from Xóchitl! :-) However, I started by googling both versions (alimentaria vs. alimenticia) and found that alimentaria has more than 3 M entries vs. alimenticia with a little over 2 M.
Then I decided to looked it up at the RAE dictionary and I found that RAE talks about cadena trófica o cadena alimentaria. I am sure that Xóchitl will give us feedback maybe on some particular flavor (Mexican, maybe?). (RAE stands for Real Academia Española).

Hello gentle,

Those are the terms I learned at school (in Mexico) and the ones I've been hearing since I can remember. But if the terms that you mentioned have more entries, and are considered by the RAE, then geegollygosh should use those.

Regards,

Xóchitl

Hi,
According to the definition on the 19th RAE edition , Alimentario is related to food (food chain, food industry, etc) whereas Alimenticio is related to feeding... as something that feeds or has nutritional value.

Hope it helps!
Mariela

Hi, it's interesting the comment as regards the difference between alimentario/alimenticio marielaer posted.
gentle, maybe it helps you to know that we in Argentina say "cadena alimentaria".