Learn about asking for forgiveness or apologizing
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: Buenos días, me llamo Lizzie. |
| Allan: Allan here. |
| Lizzie: Beginner Series, Lesson number 4. |
| Allan: “Excuse me?” |
| Lizzie: What did we look at in the last lesson, Allan? |
| Allan: Well, last lesson we looked at some different ways of showing gratitude. |
| Lizzie: Very polite. |
| Allan: Ah, very. Today we’re going to move on and learn some different ways to say “Excuse me”. |
| Lizzie: Anyone learning Spanish with our Beginner lessons are going to be real polite when they speak Spanish. |
| Allan: That’s right. Oh, when travelling being polite never hurts, Lizzy. As a matter of fact I like that about travelling to a place where you do not know the language very well. It forces you to be polite. |
| Lizzie: Where does today’s conversation take place? |
| Allan: This conversation takes place in a supermarket, where Aldo accidentally bumps into Rosa. |
| Lizzie: Be sure to check out the vocabulary list in the PDF for this lesson, which has a column showing the root of each word. |
| Allan: Let’s get into today’s conversation. Lizzy, |
| DIALOGUE |
| ALDO: ¡Ay, perdón, señora! |
| ROSA: ¡Oiga, cuidado! |
| ALDO: ¡Perdóneme! Estoy distraído. |
| ROSA: ¿Y por qué está distraído? |
| ALDO: Porque no puedo encontrar los mariscos. ¿Usted sabe dónde están? |
| ROSA: Sí, están por allá. |
| ALDO: ¡Ah, claro! Disculpe la molestia. |
| ALDO: Ah, pardon, Ma'am! |
| ROSA: Hey, watch out! |
| ALDO: Pardon me, Ma'am. I am distracted. |
| ROSA: And why are you distracted? |
| ALDO: Because I cannot find the shellfish. Do you know where they are? |
| ROSA: Yes, they are over there. |
| ALDO: Ah, of course. Excuse the bother. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Allan:Lizzie, ¿te parece común esta situación? Does this situation seem common to you? |
| Lizzie: Uy sí, sucede todo el tiempo. Todos los días. |
| Allan: Yeah, it happens all the time, it happens every day. Now, let’s pay close attention to the way today’s vocabulary is pronounced. |
| Lizzie: Here comes a breakdown. |
| Allan: So, let’s begin with… |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Lizzie: Perdonar. |
| Allan: To pardon. |
| Lizzie: Perdonar, perdonar. |
| Allan: Next we’ll hear… |
| Lizzie: Cuidado. |
| Allan: Care, carefulness, look out. |
| Lizzie: Cuidado, cuidado. |
| Allan: Now, we have… |
| Lizzie: Distraido, distraida. |
| Allan: Distracted, absent-minded. |
| Lizzie: Distraido, distraida. Distraido, distraida. |
| Allan: And then… |
| Lizzie: Disculpar. |
| Allan: To forgive, to excuse. |
| Lizzie: Disculpar, disculpar. |
| Allan: Next, we’ll hear… |
| Lizzie: Encontrar. |
| Allan: To find. |
| Lizzie: Encontrar, encontrar. |
| Allan: And finally… |
| Lizzie: Molestia. |
| Allan: Bother, trouble. |
| Lizzie: Molestia, molestia. |
| Allan: Now, this last word molestia means “bother” in so far as we are talking about an inconvenience. ¿Qué más me podrias decir sobre esta palabra? What else can you tell me about this word? |
| Lizzie: Es un sustantivo que proviene del verbo molestar. Por ejemplo me molesta esta bulla. |
| Allan: It’s a noun that comes from the verb molestar which means “to bother” or “to annoy”. For example me molesta esta bulla or This noise annoys me. |
| Lizzie: It’s a very common verb and the noun is just as common. We use these words to talk about things that we find disagreeable. |
| Allan: Let’s have a look at the usage for some of these words. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Lizzie: The first word we will look at is perdonar. |
| Allan: Lizzy, can you give us an example sentence, please? |
| Lizzie: Perdona el mal vino. |
| Allan: Pardon the bad wine. Lizzy, how can we translate the verb perdonar? |
| Lizzie: The verb perdonar means to pardon or to excuse. |
| Allan: You can see how similar looks and sounds to the English word here. |
| Lizzie: Quite often we simply say perdón as an interjection meaning “pardon” or “excuse me”. |
| Allan: Now, if someone offered you wine and then said ”Oh, excuse the bad wine” what would be the most common response? |
| Lizzie: Ay que ocurrencia. El vino está perfecto. |
| Allan: Oh, what are you talking about? The wine is fine. Now, the next word we’re going to look at today is cuidado. Lizzy, how about an example with cuidado? |
| Lizzie: Es importante tener cuidado. |
| Allan: It’s important to be careful. Hey, guys, especially in a foreign city, two things can happen. One, it’s easy to get lost and can run into a bad neighborhood and two, often tourists look out a place and they look like an easy target with that digital camera struck to their waist. |
| Lizzie: Por lo tanto hay que tener cuidado. Therefore, we must be careful. And never be afraid to ask for directions. The word cuidado means “care”, “ careful” and also “caution”. |
| Allan: Lizzy, how would you use cuidado most frequently? |
| Lizzie: It’s often used with the verb tener which mean “to have”. |
| Allan: Hey, good point. Now, that I think about it we looked at that relationship in Lesson 9 and 10 of the Newbie Series. |
| Lizzie: Tener cuidado literally “to have caution” In Spanish means “ be careful”. |
| Allan: How else may we use cuidado? |
| Lizzie: We also use the word cuidado as an interjection. |
| Allan: In which case it means “watch out” or “look out”. Okay , the next vocabulary word is distraido. Lizzy, would you give us an example, please? |
| Lizzie: Ella esta distraida. |
| Allan: She is distracted. Lizzy, how about a translation of distraido? |
| Lizzie: The word distraido means distracted or absent-minded. It can be used as an adjective, as it is here, or as a noun or the past participle of the verbs distraer to distract. |
| Allan: These adjectives are used when we want to say that someone has their head in the clouds. Okay, now, the next vocabulary word is disculpar. Lizzy, would you give as an example, please? |
| Lizzie: Disculpa por la comida mal preparada. |
| Allan: Excuse the poorly prepared meal. |
| Lizzie: Literally the verb disculpar means “to remove fault”. |
| Allan: Right. But, how do we usually translate it? |
| Lizzie: We usually translate it as “to excuse” or “to forgive”. |
| Allan: In the word disculpar we noticed the word culpa. |
| Lizzie: Do we see the word culpa in any English word, Allan? |
| Allan: Definitely. Like culprit, for example. Now, this refers to someone who is guilty of something. |
| Lizzie: That ought to make it easier to remember that disculpar means “to forgive” or “excuse”. |
| Allan: That’s right. Okay. Now, this brings us to the last vocabulary word today which is encontrar. Lizzy, how about one more example? |
| Lizzie: Encontramos el mercado. |
| Allan: We find the market. How can we translate encontrar? |
| Lizzie: The verb encontrar means “to find”. |
| Allan: If we look at the root of the word, we find that it means “to come up against something” or “to meet it from the opposite side”. |
| Lizzie: We also recognize the word contra which means against in this stem of this word. |
| Allan: So, encontrar means to find. Going back to the word cuidado. Me pregunto si es que existen otras palabras relacionadas that would be useful for us to mention. |
| Lizzie: Creo que sí. Por ejemplo la frase, cuidate. Expresa el deseo de uno que otro cuide de sí mismo y de que este bien. |
| Allan: Cuidate expresses one’s desire that someone else cares for him or himself. Hey, Liz, good point. And we usually translate this as “take care or take care of yourself”. |
| Lizzie: Right. And this is the informal singular form. The formal singular form is simply cuidese. |
| Allan: Let’s have a more thorough look at how grammar looks in this lesson. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Lizzie: What would you like to focus on today? |
| Allan: Today we’re going to look at different ways of “excusing oneself” in Spanish. |
| Lizzie: You know, this is really important to learn. As excusing and pardoning oneself, as well as asking for forgiveness are integral customs of Hispanic culture as well as any culture for that matter. |
| Allan: Let’s start out with the verb disculpar. Lizzy, where did we see this in the conversation? |
| Lizzie: Disculpa la molestia. |
| Allan: Excuse the bother. |
| Lizzie: Good. Now disculpa is the formal way of saying “excuse me”. |
| Allan: And this is the most common among people who are not close to you. |
| Lizzie: If you wanted to excuse yourself from a friend you would say disculpa or even more intimately disculpame. The same goes for the next expression perdóne and perdóneme. The meanings are the same as those of disculpar and so are the endings. |
| Allan: Lizzy, can you give us another example of perdonar? |
| Lizzie: Perdóne la molestia. |
| Allan: Pardon the bother. |
| Lizzie: So disculpe and perdóne are used to comply with a social norm. |
| Allan: So listen up. These expressions are used to show someone that you recognize that you’ve imposed and that you’re doing the right thing by accepting the fault. |
| Lizzie: Okay. Lastly, we have the expression lo siento which wasn’t used in the dialogue, but which is important to know. |
| Allan: Lizzy, can you give us an example with lo siento? |
| Lizzie: Lo siento mucho. |
| Allan: I am very sorry. |
| Lizzie: Right. So the expression lo siento literally means “I feel it” or “ I feel for you”, but we translate it as “I am sorry”. |
| Allan: So, it’s commonly used. |
| Lizzie: No, not exactly. Well, in English “I am sorry” is probably the most common expression of “pardon”. In Spanish lo siento is the least common. |
| Allan: Ah, okay. It’s pure protocol. |
| Lizzie: It’s what someone says when she or he feels bad for someone else and doesn’t know what to say. |
| Allan: So, as you can tell, it will be more useful to learn to excuse yourself with the verbs disculpar and perdonar than it will be with the phrase lo siento. So, Lizzy, you said that in Hispanic culture asking for forgiveness is a big custom. ¿Podrías darnos unos ejemplos de cuándo es importante pedir disculpas? Would you give us some examples of when is important to ask for forgiveness? |
| Lizzie: Claro. Uno pide disculpas cuando interrumpe a otra persona. |
| Allan: Sure, one asks for forgiveness when he or she interrupts someone else. |
| Lizzie: Y también cuando indispones a otra persona. |
| Allan: And also when you impose upon someone else. So, if I wanted to ask someone a question on the street how might I interrupt them? |
| Lizzie: You could say: disculpe una pregunta. |
Outro |
| Allan: This is as far as we go for today. |
| Lizzie: Se acabo la fiesta. Allan ha sido un tremendo gusto. |
| Allan: De igual manera, Lizzie. But, people, remember that these lessons are designed to be used in tandem with the language tools of the Learning Center at SpanishPod101.com. |
| Lizzie: Ya no encontramos en la próxima lección. |
| Allan: Study hard. Be well. 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