Learn how to express rates in Spanish from a conversation between a customer and a clerk in an Internet cafe
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Jessi: “Tell me how much that is per hour in Spanish.” Hi everyone, I’m Jessi. |
| Karen: Hey I’m Karen and thanks again for being here with us. |
| Jessi: And together we’ll be hosting the rest of this beginner series. Hola Karen, ¿cómo estás? |
| Karen: Muy bien, gracias. ¿Y tú? |
| Jessi: Muy bien, gracias. |
| Karen: Jessi, can you tell us what we are going to learn in this lesson? |
| Jessi: In this lesson, you’ll learn how to talk about “rates” in Spanish. |
| Karen: Oh, “la tarifa.” |
| Jessi: Right, “la tarifa,” which are “rates.” |
| Karen: Where does this conversation take place and who is it between? |
| Jessi: This conversation takes place at an internet café and it is between Hugo and a clerk. |
| Karen: Alright, let’s listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Hugo: Buenas. ¿Cuánto cuesta el uso del internet? |
| Joven: A diez centavos el minuto. Hay un límite de treinta minutos. |
| Hugo: ¡Está bien baras! ¿Y las impresiones a color? |
| Joven: A treinta centavos por hoja. |
| Hugo: ¿Neta? Pos ta rechido eso. Voy a venir más seguido. |
| Hugo: Hi. How much is it to use the Internet? |
| Clerk: Ten cents per minute. There's a limit of thirty minutes. |
| Hugo: That's really cheap! What about color printing? |
| Clerk: Thirty cents per page. |
| Hugo: For real? That's awesome. I'm going to come here more often. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Jessi: Okay. So Hugo find himself in an internet cafe and he’s asking about the rates and if you noticed, Hugo’s speech was filled with quite a bit of slang. |
| Karen: Yes, I noticed the way he spoke was really slangy. |
| Jessi: Yes, we’ll get to that in the vocab section but first, let’s talk a bit about the dialog. He’s asking about the rate to use the internet cafe, which was... |
| Karen: “Diez centavos el minuto”. |
| Jessi: “Diez centavos el minuto”, “ten cents a minute.” So I guess that’s pretty cheap but I haven’t used an internet cafe in a while though so actually I’m not sure. |
| Karen: Yes, but Hugo seems to think it’s pretty cheap. He says, “¡está bien baras!”. |
| Jessi: Like “that’s pretty cheap!” I actually remember using an internet cafe in Mexico many, many years ago, but I don’t remember how much it cost though it was just that long ago. |
| Karen: Yes, I would say that actually you don’t see that many internet cafes these days. Maybe long time ago when it first came out people used to go to internet cafes, but nowadays, they usually have a computer at home so they don’t need to use the internet cafes. |
| Jessi: Right. Like you said, a lot of people these days have their own computers, so there’s really no need to go to an internet cafe anymore. But I think if you are travelling though, they might be useful. |
| Karen: Yes, that’s exactly right, but it’s hard to find one though. |
| Jessi: Aaah that’s true, there aren’t that many around in the first place it might be hard to find. |
| Karen: Exactly. |
| Jessi: But if you really need one and you go looking for one, I’m sure you’ll find one somewhere. |
| Karen: Yes. |
| Jessi: Let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. The first one is? |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Karen: “Buenas”. |
| Jessi: “Hi.” |
| Karen: “Bue-nas”, “buenas”. |
| Jessi: The next one is… |
| Karen: “¿Neta?” |
| Jessi: “Really?” |
| Karen: “Ne-ta”, “neta”. |
| Jessi: Next is… |
| Karen: “Chido”. |
| Jessi: “Awesome”, “cool.” |
| Karen: “Chi-do”, “chido”. |
| Jessi: And last is… |
| Karen: “Seguido”. |
| Jessi: “Often.” |
| Karen: “Se-gui-do”, “seguido”. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Jessi: Let’s take a closer look at the words and phrases from this lesson. The first one is... |
| Karen: “Buenas”. |
| Jessi: “Hi.” |
| Karen: This is a short casual greeting. |
| Jessi: It sounds like it’s just shortened from something else, like “buenas tardes” or “buenas noches”. |
| Karen: Right. It can be short for either of those. |
| Jessi: It’s very slangy though, so I wouldn’t recommend it for using with people you aren’t really close to. And next is? |
| Karen: “¿Neta?” |
| Jessi: “For real?” |
| Karen: This is a slang term and when used as a question like this it means “really?” or “for real?” |
| Jessi: Right. The clerk at the internet cafe told him that it was thirty cents a page for color printing and Hugo goes “¿neta?”, “for real?” By the way, I heard that this is mainly Mexican slang, is that right? |
| Karen: Yes, that’s right. We don’t really use this in Peru but you’ll come across it in Mexico and it works as a noun too. |
| Jessi: And the next word? |
| Karen: “Chido”. |
| Jessi: “Awesome”, “cool.” We have a lot of slang terms this time round, don’t we? |
| Karen: Yes, we do. This one again is common in colloquial Mexican speech. |
| Jessi: So again, “chido” means “cool.” I have a question though. In the dialogue he says “rechido” with “re” in the beginning of it, is this different? |
| Karen: Aaah, this is the prefix “re”, which is there to emphasize it. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Jessi: Okay, I’ve heard of that. Actually, it was the focus of lesson 12 of the refresher series. In that lesson, we learned it could be used with a lot of words like “rebueno”, “refeo”, and now “rechido”. |
| Karen: Yes, that’s right. So if you want to say that something is “super cool”, you can use “rechido”. |
| Jessi: And how did he use it in the dialogue? |
| Karen: He said, “¿Neta? Pos ta rechido eso”. |
| Jessi: I like the way he says this, it’s just like “for real, that’s awesome!” |
| Karen: Yes, it sounds very casual. “Pos” is a form of “pues” and the “ta” here is short for “está”. So really the whole thing would be something like “Pues está rechido eso”. |
| Jessi: Yes, that might make more sense if you are not familiar with the shortened versions. Okay, now let’s move on to the lesson focus. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to talk about rates in Spanish. To give some examples... |
| Karen: Volume. |
| Jessi: For examples, gallons per dollar, or grams per dollar. |
| Karen: Speed. |
| Jessi: For example, miles per hour. |
| Karen: Price. |
| Jessi: For example, two for one, price per dozen. These all count as rates. So you’ll learn how to express these in Spanish. So Karen, how do we express these in Spanish? Let’s look at the example from the dialogue. Hugo asks… |
| Karen: “¿Cuánto cuesta el uso de internet?” |
| Jessi: “How much is it to use the internet?” And the clerk says… |
| Karen: “A diez centavos el minuto”. |
| Jessi: “Ten cents a minute.” Let’s break this down. |
| Karen: Okay. First, to talk about a rate we use the preposition “a”, after that comes the amount. |
| Jessi: So “a diez centavos”, “ten cents.” The “a” doesn’t really get translated. |
| Karen: Right, right. And then we can use either “por” or the definite article which is “el” or “la”. |
| Jessi: In this case it’s the definite article “el”. |
| Karen: Yes, “el minuto”. |
| Jessi: So all together? |
| Karen: “A diez centavos el minuto”. |
| Jessi: And you also mentioned we could use “por”, so could we say here “a diez centavos por minuto”? |
| Karen: Yes, in this case, they are both perfectly fine. Just know that in some expressions, one may be more common than the other. |
| Jessi: Great, let’s look at the other examples from the dialogue. Later, Hugo asks about color printing. |
| Karen: “¿Y las impresiones a color?” |
| Jessi: “What about color printing?” And the response is... |
| Karen: “A treinta centavos por hoja”. |
| Jessi: “Thirty cents per page.” So here we used “por”. Would “la hoja” be okay too? “A treinta centavos la hoja”. |
| Karen: Sure, no problem. |
| Jessi: Now, here’s something I noticed. These sentences from the dialogue are kind of incomplete, aren’t they? I mean we just gave the rate by itself, but there’s no subject. What if we want to make a complete sentence and include the subject? |
| Karen: Good point. Let’s look at some more examples. How about this one? “La cerveza está a dos por una”. |
| Jessi: “Beer is two for one.” So we have “la cerveza” followed by “está”, a form of “estar”, so we can use “estar”? |
| Karen: Well, rates that are fixed, like speed limits or speed of light. These are expressed with “ser”. On the other hand, for rates that change like gas prices or drink specials, we usually use “estar”. |
| Jessi: That actually makes perfect sense. Okay, so in that sentence we are talking about a drink special and probably won’t last forever so we use “estar”. “La cerveza está a dos por una”. |
| Karen: That’s right. |
| Jessi: How about another example? Otro ejemplo. |
| Karen: “Las donuts están a ocho dólares la docena”. |
| Jessi: “The donuts are eight dollars a dozen.” |
| Karen: Note that “docena” means “dozen.” |
| Jessi: This is a good word to know when talking about rates. And how about another sentence that uses it? |
| Karen: “Deme quince pesos por la docena”. |
| Jessi: “Give me 15 pesos for the dozen.” |
Outro |
| Jessi: Alright, well I think that’s going to do it for now. We have some more example sentences talking about rates in the PDF so make sure to check that out as well. |
| Karen: Thanks for listening. Bye everyone, ¡hasta luego! |
| Jessi: Until next time! |
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