Lesson 18 notes - bits of the body
Grupo Básico Español – lección dieciocho
Buenos días señores y señoras. Bienvenidos a la lección dieciocho de la clase de español.
Mañana es San Valentín, el día de los enamorados. Pensé que sería una buena idea mirar algo de poesía romántica.
The poem I have chosen is Puedo Escribir los Versos mas Tristes Esta Noche (Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Verses) by Pablo Neruda who was a Chilean poet and political activist.
He was born in 1904 and his pen name was a homage to the Czech poet Jan Neruda. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
Neruda wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poetry, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography and passionate love poems, such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair from 1924.
The famous Columbian novelist Gabriel García Márquez called Neruda "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."
During his lifetime, Neruda had a number diplomatic jobs and served a term as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When the American puppet president González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in the basement of a house in the port city of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped to Argentina.
When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, the new president Salvador Allende invited him to read at the national stadium and 70,000 people came to hear him.
Neruda was hospitalised with cancer at the time of the coup by Augusto Pinochet but discharged himself when he suspected a doctor of injecting him with poison on the orders of Pinochet.
Neruda died in his house in Isla Negra on 23 September 1973 hours after leaving the hospital. Although it has always been reported that he died of heart failure, on November 5, 2015 the Interior Ministry of the Chilean government issued a statement acknowledging an official document indicating he was killed as a result of “the intervention of third parties”.
Pinochet, backed by elements of the armed forces, denied permission for Neruda's funeral to be made a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets.
In our video, his poem is set to a dramatic short film with the words in English.
We still have a romantic theme ... before my holiday, we continued our story: Las Dudas de Marta. After taking the wrong clothes from the launderette, she has found the home of the girl they belong to and has gone round to swap them. Who should open the door to the flat but Alberto, the chico she has a crush on.
Capítulo Uno continuado
“¡Qué mala suerte tengo!” piensa Marta. “Resulta que la chica que tiene mi ropa es la novia de Alberto. ¡No puede ser!”
“Entra Marta,” le dice Alberto. “Creo que tenemos un problema.”
“¿Ah, sí? ¿Qué pasa?”
“Verás, Yolanda no está en casa. Ha recogido la ropa en la lavanderia y se ha marchado directamente. ¡Se ha ido a Japón! Yolanda es azafata de Iberia. Le ha salido un vuelo urgente.”
“¡Oh, no!” exclama Marta. “Entonces, ¿mi ropa está en Japón con Yolanda?”
“Eso es. Y Yolanda no vuelve hasta el domingo que viene. Ahora no podemos hablar con ella. Está en el avión. Pero, espera … quizás a mi madre se le ocurra algo. Voy a llamarla.”
“¿A tu madre?” se sorprende Marta.
“Sí, claro,” Alberto la mira y se rie. “Yolanda es mi hermana. Y nuestra madre siempre tiene buenas ideas.”
Marta suspira con alivio. ¡Así que Yolanda y Alberto no son novios! Solo son hermanos. Mientras tanto, Alberto toma el móvil y llama a su madre.
“Mi madre está en el supermercado, haciendo la compra. Ahora mismo viene. ¿Quieres pasar? Te invito a un café.”
Marta acepta encantada. Alberto le prepara un café con leche, y enseguida llega su madre. Es una señora de unos cincuenta años, cabello pelirrojo, elegante y parlanchina.
“¡Alberto! ¿Le has contado a esta chica lo de nuestro fin de semana?”
“No mamá, no creo que ...”
Pero la madre de Alberto no le deja terminar. ¡Cuánto habla esta mujer!
What are their plans for the weekend? We will have to translate the next sheet to find out.
We also asked you to describe your home, as if for an estate agent. Choose three volunteers to read their pieces. Others can hand homework in if they want it to be marked.
NB: if you want to say “in the 60s” it is “los años sesenta”.
I have just returned from Tenerife and my Spanish skills for ordering food and drink have been well practised. I did put into action one of our more obscure debates about directions.
Do you remember how to say “over there?” We discovered there were three ways:
está allí – just there
está ahí – there (a bit further away)
está allá – a long way or in the general direction
Lucy had to look up the difference, so we said don't worry about it, just learn the one. Well, on holiday, I wanted to know what the island about 10 miles away was called, so I found a use for allá. ¿Cuál es el nombre de la isla de allá?
The answer was La Gomera, but to test our previous theory, I asked another person a few days later: ¿Cuál es el nombre de la isla de allí? And they also said La Gomera. So there you are – it doesn't really matter.
I was also surprised, when wishing some staff buenos días to be answered buen día. The same for buenas noches … many of the staff were Cuban, so perhaps it's a Latin American thing. I also got buen días, so I guess no-one worries too much (or perhaps they didn't worry because they'd guessed I was English).
We are now on Chapter 8 of Sueños. In this chapter, we will learn to describe people, body parts and also take a trip to the doctors.
Let's start with bits of the body
Pelo – hair (also cabello)
La cara – face
Las orejas – ears
Los ojos – eyes
La cabeza – head
La nariz – nose
La mejilla - cheek
El bigote – moustache
La barba - beard
La boca – mouth
Los labios – lips
Los dientes – teeth (front)
Las muelas – teeth (back)
El cuello – neck
La garganta – throat
Los hombros – shoulders
La espalda – back
Los brazos – arms
El codo - elbow
Los manos – hands
Los dedos – fingers
Uñas de los dedos - fingernails
El pulgar – thumb
El pecho – chest
El tórax – chest, trunk
Los senos – breasts (además pechos y tetas)
El ombligo o ombligito – bellybutton
La barriga – belly (además panza)
La panza de cerveza – beerbelly
La cintura o el talle – waist
La cadera – hip
La cadera protético – hip replacement
The naughty bits …
El trasero or la cola - bum or bottom (culo is a bit rude)
El pene – penis (la polla is slang) - do not confuse this with chicken in a restaurant
La vagina – vagina (el coño is slang)
Las piernas – legs
La rodilla – knee
Las patas o los pies – feet
Los dedos – toes
La planta del pie – sole of the foot
El tobillo - ankle
El talón - heel (el tacón is the heel of your shoe).
Uñas de los pies – toenails
Here are some ways to describe people (not all are complimentary):
Gordo o gorda – fat (note the gender change)
Delgado o delgada – thin
Alto o alta – tall
Bajo o baja – short (corto also means short, but is used for hair, skirts …)
Rubio o rubia - blond or blonde, or fair
Moreno o morena - dark or swarthy
Guapo o guapa – handsome/attractive
Feo o fea - ugly
Joven – young
Viejo or vieja o mayor – old
Hair colour and style:
El pelo negro – black hair
Castaño – brown (castaño claro – light brown, castaño oscuro – dark brown)
Rojo – red (una pelirroja would be a red-head)
Rubio - blond
Canoso – literally 'hoary' (grey)
Pelo teñido – dyed hair
Corto - short
Largo - long
Rizado - curly
Liso – smooth
Cerquillo - fringe
Una raya lateral – side parting
Cepillado hacia atrás – brushed back
Ondulado – wavy
Eyes
Negros - black
Marrones (Spain) y cafés (LA) – brown (marron oscuro is dark brown)
Verdes - green
Azules – blue (azul claro is light blue)
Grises – grey
Exercise
You are flying to Spain tomorrow and will be met at the airport. Write a short description of yourself so the driver will recognise you.
Don't forget, when describing yourself, or another person, we use the verb ser, not estar. So soy muy alto, not estoy muy alto.
This is my effort:
Tengo sesenta y cinco años, pero parezco mucho más joven. Soy bastante alto, ni gordo ni delgado, y tengo el pelo corto y gris con una raya lateral. Estoy bien afeitado y uso gafas.
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