Learn about talking about past actions
Now Playing: Lesson Audio
Get a breakdown of the dialogue and translations instantly with the Premium line-by-line Audio. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| INTRODUCTION |
| Lizzie: Buen días, soy Lizzie. |
| Allan: Soy Allan. Phone card Frustration 1. |
| Lizzie: Sean bienvenidos. |
| Allan: Hi there, everybody, coming to you from a tiny tiny city of nine million people on the Pacific coast, Lima, Peru. |
| Lizzie: Hi, everybody. Hi, Allan. How is it going? |
| Allan: It’s going great, Lizzie. |
| Lizzie: Ready for a challenge? |
| Allan: Well, we’ve got one for you. Today we’re going to listen to Andres who is trying to make a phone call to Paola, but he’s using a phone card and he’s having trouble understanding exactly what he needs to do in order to get the call to go through. |
| Lizzie: Esto siempre sucede con los extranjeros. |
| Allan: Pero claro es que cuando uno no está acostumbrado a escuchar este tipo de instrucciones resulta bien complicado. |
| Lizzie: So, with this lesson, you’ll learn how to use a phone card in Spanish which you’ll probably have to do at some point if you come to Latin America. |
| Allan: And if that weren’t enough on top of that we’re going to learn a new verb tense today. |
| Lizzie: Which one? |
| Allan: El tiempo pretérito perfecto |
| Lizzie: ¡Hay que bien! Es un tiempo muy pero muy útil. |
| Allan: That’s right, guys. With this tense you’re going to learn how to express what has happened and what we have done. |
| Lizzie: Very interesting topic. |
| Allan: Interesting, yeah, but it’s also useful. This is a really great step to take in the learning process. |
| Lizzie: Sounds like it’s going to be another good one. |
| Allan: Alright, Lizzie. It’s about that time. |
| Lizzie: Listen carefully to the following conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| GRABACIÓN: ¡Bienvenido a su tarjeta 'Habla Más'... Por favor, ingrese su clave secreta. |
| ANDRÉS: A ver... ¿dónde está? Aquí está: 4... 3.. 3.. 5... 2... 5... 8... |
| GRABACIÓN: El número que usted ha marcado es incorrecto. Por favor verifique el número y vuelva a marcar. |
| ANDRÉS: ¡Pucha! 433-5 25... 9... |
| GRABACIÓN: El saldo de su tarjeta es un sol con cincuenta céntimos. Por favor, marque el número al que usted desea llamar. |
| ANDRÉS: 243-0754 |
| GRABACIÓN: Usted no cuenta con saldo suficiente para realizar esta llamada. |
| GRABACIÓN: Welcome to your 'Habla Más' card... Please enter your PIN. |
| ANDRÉS: Let's see... where is it? Here it is: 4... 3.. 3.. 5... 2... 5... 8... |
| GRABACIÓN: The number that you've entered is incorrect. Please verify the number and dial again. |
| ANDRÉS: Shoot! 433-5 25... 9... |
| GRABACIÓN: The balance of this card is one Sol and fifty cents. Please, dial the number that you wish to call. |
| ANDRÉS: 243-0754 |
| GRABACIÓN: You do not have sufficient funds to make this call. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Allan: Man, Andres, I know how you feel. I mean it can be really tough to do something as seemingly easy as to use a phone card when you’re doing it in Spanish. |
| Lizzie: Claro las instrucciones pueden ser dificil. |
| Allan: I know and sometimes they just don’t seem to work at all. But I’ve got to tell you, Lizzie. It’s certainly an improvement over the past one. Remember you had to put tons and tons of coins. I mean really communication has just become so much smoother. You just go into the right café now. |
| Lizzie: Sí ahora realmente ahora no tengo problemas con las tarjetas. |
| Allan: Alright. Enough of that. Time to go over the vocab. |
| Lizzie: Sounds like a good idea. |
| Allan: So, let’s begin with… |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Lizzie: ingresar |
| Allan: To enter. |
| Lizzie: ingresar, ingresar |
| Allan: Next, we’ll hea… |
| Lizzie: clave secreta |
| Allan: Secret code, pin. |
| Lizzie: clave secreta, clave secreta |
| Allan: Now, we’ll hear… |
| Lizzie: marcar |
| Allan: To dial. |
| Lizzie: marcar, marcar |
| Allan: Next, we’ll see… |
| Lizzie: verificar |
| Allan: To verify, to check. |
| Lizzie: verificar, verificar |
| Allan: Now, we’ll hear… |
| Lizzie: saldo |
| Allan: Balance. |
| Lizzie: saldo, saldo |
| Allan: And finally… |
| Lizzie: contar |
| Allan: To count, to have. |
| Lizzie: contar, contar |
| Allan: Alright, Lizzie. Now, before we move on to the usage, let’s focus really quickly on the pronunciation. |
| Lizzie: Muy bien. ¿Qué palabra? |
| Allan: Well, let’s tackle the construction clave secreta. |
| Lizzie: clave secreta |
| Allan: Two words here. clave which is “key or code” and secreta which is “a secret”. Now, the most important point here is to recognize the way that the sounds of these two words are fused together. Notice the last syllable of the first word VE from clave and then the first syllable of the second word SE from secreta. So, Lizzie, shows us how these words sound at normal speed, please. |
| Lizzie: clave secreta |
| Allan: That’s right. Notice there’s no pause in between them clave secreta. |
| Lizzie: clave secreta. Estudiemos entonces el uso de algunos vocablos. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Allan: Let’s switch our focus to the usage of these words now, putting them into context to really see what they mean. |
| Lizzie: ¿Por dónde quisieras empezar? |
| Allan: Empecemos con la palabra ingresar. |
| Lizzie: Ok. |
| Allan: So, Lizzie, if Manuel goes into the building, then Manuel… |
| Lizzie: entra al edificio |
| Allan: So, you use the verb entra there. |
| Lizzie: Yep. |
| Allan: And in this sentence it means… |
| Lizzie: “To enter”. |
| Allan: Now, when Andres is trying to use his phone card he finds the pin and then he needs to… |
| Lizzie: tiene ingresará |
| Allan: Aha. And the verb you’ve used here is… |
| Lizzie: ingresar |
| Allan: And this means “to put in”. I mean it’s kind of like “to enter”, but the essential meaning here is that something is being put inside something else. |
| Lizzie: Right. That’s why we can also use this verb as a synonym for “deposit”. |
| Allan: Exactly. And here, in today’s conversation the recording tells Andres ingrese su clave secreta. into your pin. |
| Lizzie: ¿Seguimos? |
| Allan: Sure. Next stop, we have another verb: marcar. |
| Lizzie: Marcar. |
| Allan: And this verb has a couple of different meanings. For example in today’s conversation Andrés marca el número al que desea llamar. So, Lizzie, if he is on the phone and he has to marcar the number, then what does this verb mean here? |
| Lizzie: To dial. |
| Allan: Así es “to dial”. However, we should point out that in other cases this verb can mean “to show” as in ”to indicate”. |
| Lizzie: Claro por ejemplo la expresión de su cara marc su felicidad. |
| Allan: Hey, that’s a great example. The expression on her face showed her happiness. So, you can see that the meaning of the verb marcar will depend on the context in which it’s used. |
| Lizzie: Muy bien. |
| Allan: ¿Avanzamos? |
| Lizzie: Sí maestro. |
| Allan: Ok. This time, a noun, a masculine noun. saldo |
| Lizzie: We heard this one in the conversation. The voice in the recording said El saldo de tu tarjeta es un sol con cincuenta céntimos. |
| Allan: Right. And this means: The balance of this card is one sol and fifty centimos. So, the word saldo here means “balance”, how much you’ve got left in an account. And this applies not only to phone cards but savings accounts, checking accounts, credit accounts etc. |
| Lizzie: We should do some lessons about bank and sections. |
| Allan: Yeah. There’s been some talk about that in the forum. I think it’s a great idea, so practical. |
| Lizzie: Ok, one more word. |
| Allan: Here again, another verb. This time contar. |
| Lizzie: This is one we’ve seen before. |
| Allan: We have, but we haven’t seen it used in this way. |
| Lizzie: A ver. |
| Allan: Well, previously we’ve seen how the verb contar can be used to calculate quantities. |
| Lizzie: Claro por ejemplo, conté todos los platos y falta uno. |
| Allan: Right. And by that you mean: I’ve counted all the plates and there is one missing. So, in this sense contar means ‘to count’. Now, in today’s conversation the voice on the phone card recording said Usted no cuenta con saldo suficiente para realizar esta llamada. “You do not have sufficient funds to make this call”. So, Lizzie, what’s the word that comes immediately after this verb contar? |
| Lizzie: It’s simply con |
| Allan: And con usually means “whiff”, right? |
| Lizzie: Right. |
| Allan: Aha. But here we’ve got a special case. When we say contar con it often means “to have” in the sense of “being provided with”. |
| Lizzie: Exacto. Por ejemplo se puede decir, contamos con la tecnología más avanzada de la industria. |
| Allan: And by that you mean “We have the most advanced technology in the industry.” And if we recall that the verb contar also means “to tell” and that un cuento is “tale” then we can also see how this construction contar con is kind of saying “to be able to say”. For example, cuentan con los recursos necesarios “They have the necessary resources”. |
| Lizzie: So, Allan, in today’s conversation Andres is using a phone card. |
| Allan: Right. Now, Lizzie, the way phone calls are often made in Peru is quite a bit different than in other places. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the different kinds of phone calls you can make? |
| Lizzie: Bueno si tienes una linea fija puedes hacer llamadas hasta que se acabe el crédito. |
| Allan: Wow, that’s a good point, Lizzie. Lizzie is telling us about the fixed line telephones that are very, very popular in Peru. In fact they are often called las lineas populares . These are phones that you pay a monthly fee for and you receive a certain amount of minutes. Once those minutes are passed you need to buy a phone card to get additional minutes. But you can still receive calls. These kinds of telephones have been very, very popular with the people who don’t have a lot of money. It’s been a great way to get telephones into the houses of the poor people in Peru. And that’s good. |
| Lizzie: Y bueno cuando ya se haya acabado el crédito hay que usar tarjetas telefónicas. |
| Allan: That’s right. It’s very practical. So again when the minutes of your landline run out you have to buy a phone card , but thankfully this could be bought just about everywhere you turn: they’re selling them on the street corners, in the stores, everywhere. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Lizzie: Ahora estudiemos la gramática. |
| Allan: Time to learn how the language is working here and how to make it work for us. |
| Lizzie: And today’s topic is… |
| Allan: …The Preterit Perfect. |
| Lizzie: El Pretérito Perfecto. |
| Allan: It’s a great tense to learn. So, let’s start up by going back to the conversation to hear exactly how this was used. |
| Lizzie: Sure. The voice on the phone card recording says: El número que usted ha marcado es incorrecto. |
| Allan: And that means “The number that you’ve entered is incorrect”. So, Lizzie, what’s the verb in the preterit perfect here? |
| Lizzie: It’s ha marcado. |
| Allan: Ok. Two words. This we call a ‘compound tense’ since we need to use two different words together in order to express it. |
| Lizzie: Claro. |
| Allan: Ok First word here: |
| Lizzie: ha |
| Allan: Simply spelled “ha”. And Lizzie, what’s this verb in the infinitive? |
| Lizzie: haver |
| Allan: Right. Haver. So, the form ha is simply the third person singular of the present indicative. el ha ya ha usted ha Hey, what about the second word? |
| Lizzie: It’s marcado. |
| Allan: Ok. Now, what kind of word is this? |
| Lizzie: It’s a past participle of the verb marcar. |
| Allan: Great. So, when we say usted ha marcado we mean “You have dialed”. So, all we have to do is use a form of the verb haver conjugated to the present tense of the Indicative Mood and then simply add the past participle. |
| Lizzie: Should we quickly go over this form of haber? |
| Allan: Sin duda. Haber. |
| Lizzie: yo he, tú has , él ha , nosotros hemos ,vosotros habéis ,ellos han |
| Allan: Exactly. So, after this we’re going to just add the past participle of the main verb in the expression. So if we want to say “we have spoken”, we would say… |
| Lizzie: hemos hablado |
| Allan: Or “You have done a good job”. |
| Lizzie: Has hecho un buen trabajo. |
| Allan: And here again that “They invited us to have dinner”. |
| Lizzie: Nos han invitado a cenar. |
| Allan: Great. So, one of the things that we need to point out with this tense is that it expresses an action in the past and that the meaning of this action kind of reaches the present moment. For example He trabajado todo el día. “I’ve worked all day long”. Now, this kind of implies that I’m still working and that I’ve been working. |
| Lizzie: Interesting point, Allan. |
| Allan: And again, with this tense you can express what “has happened” or you “have done”. |
| Lizzie: Allan, when is it common to use this tense? |
| Allan: Ugh, Lizzie. You hear this tense every day. For example he terminado mi segundo y ahora estoy listo para el postre. “I’ve just finished my main course and now I am ready for dessert”. |
| Lizzie: ¿Y cual va a ser el postre? |
| Allan: un creme brulee con leche asada. |
| Lizzie: Que rico. |
Outro |
| Allan: Well, that’s about it for today. |
| Lizzie: Como siempre maestro, ha sido un gustazo. |
| Allan: Gracias Lizzie. Take it easy, guys, but keep studying. You’ll see it really is worth it. Chao. |
| Lizzie: Chao! |
Easily master this lesson’s grammar points with in-depth explanations and examples. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Comments
Hide