In this phrase: "Yo había perdido la pasión por temas de orden menos digno", we can use the variant "poco" for the word "menos", and like this it sounds better, I think. But the first phrase is wrong?
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1"Menos" compares to something else, as in "less dignified (than)". On the other hand, "poco" is absolute, as in "not very dignified". We would need more context to give a more concrete answer...– wimiCommented Mar 1, 2020 at 11:20
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1 Answer
The sentence is grammatically correct. "Temas de orden menos digno" means "topics of a less dignified order", or more simply, "less dignified topics".
For this sentence to make sense in context, there should be a basis for the comparison that is implicit in the word menos. That is, a certain topic of thought or discussion must have been mentioned before, so that these "less dignified topics" could be said to be "topics (that are) less dignified than" that previous one.
You can use poco here as well, but then there's no comparison. "Temas de orden poco digno" just means "topics of little dignified order", or more idiomatically, "scarcely dignified topics".
answered Mar 1, 2020 at 13:13
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1Wouldn't ‘worthy’ or ‘worthwhile’ be a better translation? ‘Less dignified topics’ and ‘scarcely dignified topics’ both sound odd to me (native English) Commented Mar 1, 2020 at 15:12
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Digno can mean both things in Spanish. Your native intuition is surely better than mine. I'll wait to see if OP is satisfied in any case (since the exact meaning is not important but the grammar). Commented Mar 1, 2020 at 21:49
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I think worthy and dignified are both possible but which is better depends on the context which we do not have.– mdeweyCommented Mar 2, 2020 at 11:22