| ¡Hola! Soy Brenda Romaniello, tu profesora de español. |
| “Hello! I’m Brenda Romaniello, your Spanish teacher.” |
| Hoy, vamos a ver el verbo poder en español. |
| Today, we are going to have a look at the verbo poder which means “can / be able to” in English. |
| We’re going to use el verbo poder en español to talk about skills and abilities, so basically, things that you can do. So before we start talking about skills and abilities that you may have and how to use them in Spanish, let’s have a look at the conjugation of this verb. El verbo poder is an irregular verb in the present tense in Spanish, and as you can see, the ending of the verb is -ER. So remember, we have three different endings for infinitive verbs in Spanish; verbs that end in -AR, verbs that end in -ER, and verbs that end in -IR. In the case of poder, it belongs to the second category of infinitive verbs in Spanish because it ends in -ER. So what does that mean? Why is that important? Because, when we conjugate it, that is when we put the verb in… in agreement with the person performing the action, we’re going to change that ending depending on the person that is performing the action. |
| There is a specific ending for the verbs that end in -ER which will… I’ll show in this specific lesson that you can use, basically, for all the other, other regular verbs in Spanish in the present tense. But we say that el verbo poder en español is actually an, an, an irregular verb, which means that something is going to change. Lucky for us, it’s not the ending that’s going to change when, when we conjugate this verb, but rather, the stem of the verb so the pod part. When we conjugate this verb in Spanish, we’re going to change the “O” for “UE.” Now, be careful, nosotros and vosotros, they never or generally, they never change when we conjugate them in the present tense. So, in that case, it’s going to, to keep the stem just as any regular verb. |
| Let’s conjugate then this verb in the present tense in Spanish. |
| Poder |
| Yo puedo |
| Tú puedes |
| Él-ella puede |
| Nosotros-nosotras podemos |
| Vosotros-vosotras podéis |
| Ustedes pueden |
| Ellos-ellas pueden |
| ¡Fantástico! Now that we have conjugated this verb and we know how to put it in a sentence with a person performing the action, let’s talk about some skills and abilities in Spanish. So, we can use this verb to talk about all the amazing things that we can do in Spanish. Por ejemplo, we can talk about sports abilities. |
| You can say… |
| Puedo nadar |
| Puedo esquiar |
| Puedo bailar salsa |
| Puedo correr 5 km |
| No es nada 5km |
| Not much. I’m not much of a runner, obviously. The only thing I can run to is the bus. I, I, I, it feels like 5K. |
| Puedo correr una maratón |
| Other skills could be speaking a language or being able to draw or play an instrument. |
| Por ejemplo… |
| Puedo hablar español |
| Puedo hablar francés |
| Puedo hablar ruso |
| Puedo dibujar |
| Puedo pintar |
| Puedo tejer |
| Puedo tocar la guitarra |
| Puedo tocar el violín |
| Puedo tocar el piano |
| We can also talk about general skills or information abilities. |
| Por ejemplo… |
| Puedo hablar de economía y política |
| And some general skills… |
| Puedo cocinar muy bien |
| Por ejemplo… |
| Puedo cocinar Lasagnas |
| Puedo cocinar paellas |
| Puedo cocinar auténticos tacos mexicanos |
| So as you can see, to talk about all these skills, we’re using el verbo poder and then the ability which could also be another verb. Be careful, when we have two verbs together, we only conjugate the first. So, you can see here that I say “puedo nadar.” It’s incorrect to say “puedo nado.” In this case, we don’t need to say nado. We need the verb in the infinitive form nadar, “puedo nadar.” If you say, nado, that means “I swim,” so there, you’re conjugating the verb to say something different. So, you also, of course, are talking about skills because you say nado “I swim,” but in this particular case, when you use it with the verb poder, you’re talking about a specific skill. You want to say that you have that skill, puedo nadar “I am able to swim,” “I can swim.” So that’s why I had to leave the second verb in the infinitive form. |
| So, if you want to say that you cannot do these things or if you don’t have the ability to do certain things, you can do it in a very simple way. All we have to do is put a no before the verb to basically talk about things that we cannot do or are not able to do. |
| Por ejemplo… |
| No puedo nadar |
| No puedo esquiar |
| No puedo bailar tango |
| No puedo cocinar nada |
| No puedo conducir |
| And now, we can also use this verb to establish a, a basic conversation in Spanish because it’s really interesting when you want to get to know people better, if you talk about things that you can or cannot do and then compare it and contrast, you can ask them, they answer, then, they can ask you back and you can also reply pretty much using the same structure. |
| So let’s have a look at how to ask people what abilities they have or what skills they have or what can they do. We’re going to use the verb in the second person singular tú, right? So, we’re gonna say puedes. For example, if we want to ask, “Can you swim?” we’re going to say, “¿Puedes nadar?” And remember, we have the question marks at the beginning and at the end to establish that that’s a question, and then we, we do it in the oral form with the intonation. |
| ¿Puedes nadar? |
| “Can you swim?” |
| ¿Puedes cocinar lasagna? |
| “Can you cook lasagna? |
| ¿Puedes hablar ruso? |
| “Can you speak Russian?” |
| And for the answer, it’s very simple. To answer these questions in an affirmative way, we would say, “Sí, puedo nadar.” Then you can ask, “¿Y tú?” and then you have the beautiful conversation. |
| ¿Puedes nadar? |
| “Sí, puedo nadar ¿Y tú?” |
| To answer this question in the negative form, you can say “No, no puedo nadar ¿Y tú?” “What about you?” So pay attention that here, we have two NOs. The first no is going to be answering no to the question, “Can you swim?” No. And the second no that you see there is going to be used to negate the verb, so “No puedo nadar” “I cannot swim.” |
| There you have it. This is a great piece of information that you can use when you talk to your amigos in Spanish and ask, and talk about different abilities and skills. It’s a great way to get to know Spanish speakers better. |
| I really hope that you understand this lesson and that you found this lesson helpful. Give me a thumb, thumbs up if you did and I will be very glad to see you next class. Nos vemos and ¡adiós! |
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