Grupo Básico Español – lección veintidós
Grupo
Básico Español – lección veintidós
Buenos
días damas y caballeros. Bienvenidos a la lección veintidós de la clase de
español.
I’m just back from Tenerife. How would we ask a
friend if they had enjoyed their holiday?
In Spanish, we don’t say “did you have a good
time?” we say “you had a good time?” but use inflection to suggest a question.
Tuviste is the preterite form of you (informal) had. If you were asking
your boss, you might say tuvo. Note that
holiday in Spanish is plural and everything around a plural noun (the adjective
and indefinite article) also must be plural. So we have:
¿Tuviste unas buenas vacaciones? If you want to add a place,
just stick it on the end … ¿Tuviste unas buenas vacaciones en Tenerife?
To ask if your friend had a good time in Tenerife,
you can say: ¿Tuviste un
buen tiempo en Tenerife? This brings an interesting quirk in how the Spanish talk about
having a good time. To ask a specific question: Did you have a good time in
Tenerife? It could be phrased (above) as in English.
However, if you just wanted to ask: did you have a
good time? Then the question in Spanish becomes: did it pass well? Which is: ¿Lo pasaste bien?
To reply to any of the above questions, you should
use the verb pasar (to pass, to happen), so the answer would be:
Lo pasamos bien – we had a good time
Lo pasé bien – I had a good time
I bet you wish you’d never asked. Who would have
thought asking about holidays was so complicated!
 |
| Una boína |
¿Quién sabe la palabra en español para hat?
But every hat is not a
sombrero. Por ejemplo, a beret is una boína, a cap is una gorra and a wool hat (like
we wear in winter) is called un gorro. A baseball cap is la
gorra de béisbol (or just una
béisbol for short).
In the last lesson, I
gave you a poem by Mario Benedetti or, to give him his full name, Mario Orlando
Hardy Hamlet Brenno Benedetti Farrugia. He was a Uruguayan journalist, author
and poet. He died in 2009. Despite publishing more than 80 books in 20
languages he is little known in the English-speaking world. He’s considered to
be one of the most important Latin American poets of the 20th
Century.
Todavía tengo casi todos mis dientes
casi todos mis cabellos y poquísimas
canas
puedo hacer y deshacer el amor
trepar una escalera de dos en dos
y correr cuarenta metros detrás del
ómnibus
o sea que no debería sentirme viejo
pero el grave problema es que antes
no me fijaba en estos detalles. Fijar (to fix)
I still have almost all
my teeth
almost all my hair and
very few grey hairs
I can make and break love
climb a staircase two by
two
and run forty meters
behind the bus
so that I should not feel
old
but the serious problem
is that before
I did not pay attention to these details.
Hoy,
tenemos un pequeño regalo para todos ustedes. Vamos a estudiar la conjugación
de verbos.
Miraremos
los verbos regulares en los tiempos presente, pretérito y futuro.
You need to know all the various conjugations to use the language
properly and in Spanish there are very many more conjugations than in English.
However, if it’s a regular verb, you know that all the endings will
follow a pattern, so learning the pattern is a quick way to learn to conjugate
verbs.
This week, Xisca is looking at -ar verbs in the present tense. Let’s
watch the video …
So that’s the present tense … ¿es pan comido, sí? Do you remember that
saying? Pan comido means “a piece of cake” or “easy peasey”. But as well as the
present tense, we want to do the simple past (preterit) and the future.
Here’s a little table to help you
|
|
Present
|
Preterit
|
Future
|
|
Yo
|
hablo
|
Hablé
|
hablaré
|
|
Tú
|
hablas
|
Hablaste
|
hablarás
|
|
Él/ella/usted
|
habla
|
Habló
|
hablará
|
|
Nosotros
|
hablamos
|
Hablamos
|
hablaremos
|
|
Vosotros
|
hablaís
|
Hablasteis
|
hablaréis
|
|
Ellos/ellas/ustedes
|
hablan
|
Hablaron
|
hablarán
|
These endings will work for all regular -ar verbs, so learn the endings
and you’ll be able to conjugate any regular verb.
Some quick exercises with those verbs:
1. Hablar
(to speak). Do you speak English? ¿Habla Inglés?
2.
Amar (to love). I love you very much my love. Te amo mucho mi amor.
3.
Bailar (to dance). We danced Saturday night. Bailamos los sábados por la noche.
4.
Caminar (to walk). They will walk to school
every day. Ellos caminarán a la escuela todos los
días
5. Cantar
(to sing). Will he sing this evening? ¿Él cantará esta
noche?
6.
Visitar (to visit). Do you all visit your
grandparents each week? ¿Todos ustedes visitan a sus abuelos cada
semana?
7.
Trabajar (to work). We will work hard at the
factory. Trabajaremos duro en la fábrica.
8.
Crear (to create). My friend created amazing
works of art. Mi amigo creó increíbles obras de
arte.
9. Necesitar
(to need). I will need more vegetables tomorrow. Mañana necesitaré más
vegetales
10. Llevar
(to carry, to wear, to take). Will you carry the bag for me please. ¿Me llevarás la
bolsa por favor?
11. Admirar
(to admire). She admired his work yesterday. Ella admiró su trabajo ayer.
12. Reciclar
(to recycle). I will recycle all plastic this year. Reciclaré todo el plástico este año
Next week we will look at regular -ir verbs.
Here you go …
Who knows the word for ‘here’ in
Spanish?
Aquí means here, but so does acá – are the two interchangeable or is there a difference in how
they should be used? Any ideas?
Acá is used when the subject is moving and aquí when the subject is not in motion.
So when I call my dog I say ven acá not ven aquí because the subject
(my dog) will need to move to come to me. If I wanted to say “I am here” I
would say estoy aquí.
Spanish speakers often mix them up,
so don’t worry too much. They also often miss them out altogether. If someone
asked me if my granddaughter was with me, I could say no está instead of no está aquí.
When getting directions, you might
hear más acá which means more over here (or
nearer).
A handy phrase for conversation is aquí tiene (here you go). Use it when handing
something to someone. Aquí tienes if they are a friend. It’s the equivalent of voila in French.
Now we are on Chapter 9
of Sueños. In this chapter, we will:
- Learn
to ask people what they like doing and say what you like doing
- Talk
about dates
- Say
how you celebrate festivals and memorable days
- We
will also revise ordering drinks and snacks
It just so happens that
in Ecuador (and throughout Latin America) there is an important festival on
yesterday and today. It’s called Carnaval in Ecuador and Mardi Gras in other
places.
It’s a time for excess
and lawlessness in preparation for the austerity of Lent.
In Ecuador, there are
parades, but for the previous few days, Carnaval is noted for water fights. In
recent years, there has been a ban of water fights on public transport and a
move towards spraying foam instead. The very lawlessness of Carnaval means that
any attempt to set rules means they will immediately be broken.
We make pancakes, the
Ecuadorians have water fights … it’s a cultural thing.
To ask what a person
likes to do, you can say, por ejemplo: ¿Qué te gusta
hacer los domingos? What do you like doing on Sundays? Note the question
was in the informal. If it was formal how would you say it? ¿Qué le gusta hacer los domingos?
To answer, you can say: Me gusta … (I like to …)
Por ejemplo:
Me gusta
descansar (I like to rest)
Me gusta estar
con mis amigos (I like being with my friends)
If you like doing
something a lot, you can say: me gusta mucho …
Por ejemplo: Me gusta mucho ir al parque (I like going to the park
very much)
If you love doing
something, you can say: me encanta …
Por ejemplo: Me encanta ir al
cine (I love going to the cinema)
If you don’t like something,
you can say: no me gusta …
Por ejemplo: no me gusta ir al
cine (I don’t like going to the cinema)
To add extra emphasis,
you can say: no me gusta nada …
Here are some things you
might enjoy doing:
Leer – to
read
Ver películas –
watch films
Cocinar –
cook
Escribir –
to write
Nadar
Ir al bar –
go to the pub (ir al teatro, ir al cine)
Pasear –
take a walk
Pasear al
perro
Correr – to
run
Ir al gimnasio
Ejercitar
Jugar fútbol, tenis, golf, rugby, baloncesto
Tocar la guitarra, piano, violín, flauta
Pintar
Pasar tiempo en el jardín o estar en el jardín
Conversar con amigos
Hornear pasteles
Ir de compras
… and some things you may
not enjoy:
Tareas de la casa o tareas domésticas = housework
Planchando la ropa = ironing clothes
Limpiar la casa = to clean the house
Lavar la ropa = to wash clothes
Lavando los platos = doing the dishes
Have we missed anything?
Let’s practice those
sentences (go round class, one asks the next person the question, the other
answers).
¿Qué te gusta hacer los sábados?
¿Qué te gusta hacer los domingos?
¿Qué te gusta hacer los jueves?
¿Qué te gusta hacer por las noches?
¿Qué te gusta hacer por las mañanas?
¿Qué te gusta hacer en vacaciones?
¿Qué no te gusta hacer los fines de semana?
We can also say what other
people like, or not like, doing:
Le gusta ir al teatro. That could be he or she likes going to
the theatre. How would we say she likes to go to the theatre?
A ella le gusta ir al teatro.
A él le gusta ir al teatro.
You can also use that
sentence construction to be more emphatic about what you like:
A mí me gusta leer, pero a él no le gusta.
Or for named people:
A Juan le gusta quedarse en la cama.
A María y a Tere les gusta ir al parque
Do you remember our lesson about cognates and near-perfect
cognates? These are words that sound the same, or almost the same in English as
Spanish.
We learned that some words in English translate directly into
Spanish with just a change of the ending. This gives us a whole range of
Spanish words that we already know. Let’s look at those rules:
ent becomes ente, so urgent becomes urgente.
ant becomes ante. Constante
tion becomes ción. atención
ary becomes ario. necesario
ical becomes ico. comico
ence becomes encia. diferencia
ance becomes ancia. importancia
Comments
Post a Comment