recuento

[maga]

I came across the following headline in a Spanish newspaper on 11/7 after Biden was declared winner of the US election: "Biden derrota a Trump tras un agónico recuento". I had thought recuento means recount, but it turns out it also means count. If a Spaniard who was not following the US election sees this headline, would he understand it as "count" and not "recount" ? I know of no other language in which a verb and the corresponding repetition verb are the same. Is this a common source of confusion for Spanish speakers ?

[Enri Su]

Hello maga i hope its not too late to answer your question

Actually "recuento" does mean "recount", all the confusion is about the interpretation that a reader gives to the sentece, but I will explain it to you in the following example

In the sentence that you previously mentioned

"Biden derrota a trump tras un agonico recuento"

"Recuento" means that a previous count was made so the news that you read was the second one that the news-source did about the counting and therefore there is a first article that can be titled like this:

"Biden derrota a trump en el conteo de los votos"

In this case you use "conteo" because its the first time they are counting and you have to specify what you are counting, in this case are the votes(los votos) but for some reason they needed to count the votes again so the next article has to be titled like the example that you mentioned

"Biden derrota a trump tras un agonico recuento"

And if you realize in this sentence you are not specifying what you are counting(votes) for the simple reason that you were already informed from the previous article they made

I hope you find this helpful