That's easy for you to say.
GJC
Este lunes 16 de septiembre a las 2 de la tarde el equipo LOHAN (Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator) lanzará un globo meteorológico cerca de Piedrahita (Avila). Necesitamos la ayuda de los radioaficiondos españoles y portugueses para recibir señales de nuestros cuatro transmisores a bordo: CHAV (434.075MHz), BUZZ (434.200MHz …
> Shouldn't that be "Echarnos una mano"?
No. As someone else has pointed out, "echad" is the correct form for the 2nd person plural imperative of "echar", which is the infinitive.
Having said that, in informal Spanish the infinitive replacing the imperative is often heard in these cases, so you might have well heard "echarnos una mano" from a native speaker. Strictly, it is incorrect, but widely used and always understood.
And by the way, there was no reason for the downvotes, in my opinion. It was a perfectly legitimate question.
> Shouldn't that be "Echarnos una mano"?
No. As someone else has pointed out, "echad" is the correct form for the 2nd person plural imperative of "echar", which is the infinitive.
Technically, it would be "Échenos una mano!" as yes "Echarnos una mano" sounds weird due to the infinitive. But in Spaniard Spanish, they still use the formal 2nd person (think of the Spanish version of "thee") so it is correct for El Reg to use "Echadnos una mano". :)
¡Qué buen español escriben en El Reg!
Oh man. You just reminded me of an incident that some friends had when they went to Barcelona a couple of years ago. They arrive at a hotel at 3am and they're looking if they have rooms available. So they decide to ask if the hotel is "in Service". The dialog went like this:
Friend: Hay servicio?
Hotel Attendant: Si, en el último piso
(all of them start going upstairs)
H: ¡Oigan! ¡Pero sólo de uno en uno!
(cue puzzled look)
This is when they all found out that "servicio" in Spain usually means "bathroom", so the attendant didn't understand "are you in service" but "do you have bathrooms?"