Learn how to use the Spanish verb that means "to owe" in a modal sense
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Fernando: “You must help me read the Spanish signs.” I’m Fernando and as always I’m in the studio with JP. |
| JP: Hola Fernando, everything okay? |
| Fernando: Everything is good, we are about to find out what these Spanish signs are. In this lesson you will learn about the modal verb “deber”. This conversation takes place at Mauricio’s apartment, the conversation is between Antonio and Mauricio and the speakers will be using the familiar register. |
| JP: Shall we listen to the dialogue? |
| Fernando: Yes. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Antonio: Debemos irnos ya hacia el estadio. |
| Mauricio: Es muy temprano todavía. |
| Antonio: Puede ser, pero nos vamos a topar con mucho tráfico después. |
| Mauricio: Eso sí. Aparte es mejor esperar en el estadio con una fría. |
| Antonio: We should leave now for the stadium. |
| Maurico: It's still too early. |
| Antonio: Maybe, but we're going to come across a lot of traffic later. |
| Maricio: That's true. Besides, it's better to wait in the stadium with a cold one. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| JP: So Antonio and Mauricio are planning on going to the stadium. They are going to see like a football game or something? |
| Fernando: Probably a baseball game. You know. |
| JP: Okay. But they haven’t left the house yet and Antonio is a little anxious to get going. |
| Fernando: Yeah. “Debemos irnos ya hacia el estadio”. |
| JP: “Debemos irnos ya”. Let’s start at the end of this sentence with the word for “stadium.” |
| Fernando: “El estadio”. |
| JP: “El estadio”, and we had to say “toward the stadium.” |
| Fernando: “Hacia”. |
| JP: “Hacia el estadio”, “hacia” means “toward.” Now the verb is “to get out of here”. |
| Fernando: “Irnos”. |
| JP: “Irnos”, “to get ourselves out of here towards the stadium”, literally. The very first word in the sentence is “we ought to”, “we should” or “we must.” |
| Fernando: “Debemos”. |
| JP: “Debemos”. Let’s put it all together, “we must leave for the stadium.” |
| Fernando: “Debemos irnos ya hacia el estadio”. |
| JP: “Debemos irnos ya hacia el estadio”. Mauricio, says “it’s still too early.” |
| Fernando: “Es muy temprano todavía”. |
| JP: “Es muy temprano todavía”. Okay, the word for “early”? |
| Fernando: “Temprano”. |
| JP: “Temprano”, it’s “early.” |
| Fernando: “Es muy temprano”. |
| JP: “Es muy temprano”. That “es” is “it’s”. “Es muy temprano”, that “muy” means “it’s very early”, “it’s too early.” He wants to say “it’s still too early”, so how does he say that? |
| Fernando: “Es muy temprano todavía”. |
| JP: “Es muy temprano todavía”, that “todavía” means “still.” So Antonio answers, “well, it could be…” |
| Fernando: “Puede ser”. |
| JP: “Puede ser”, but… |
| Fernando: Pero... |
| JP: There is always a “but”. “We are going to run into a lot of traffic afterward.” |
| Fernando: “Nos vamos a topar con mucho tráfico después”. |
| JP: Okay, so we have a special verb in Spanish that means “to come across” or “to run into.” |
| Fernando: “Toparse”. |
| JP: “Toparse”. If I wanted to say “we are going to come across”, how do I say that? |
| Fernando: “Nos vamos a topar”. |
| JP: “Nos vamos a topar”. You can also say “vamos a toparnos” but here Antonio has decided to say “pero nos vamos a topar”. |
| Fernando: Both are perfectly acceptable. |
| JP: So what are we going to run into? With a lot of traffic afterwards. |
| Fernando: “Con mucho tráfico después”. |
| JP: “Con mucho tráfico después”. Now that word “with” which is “con” this kind of goes with “topar”, “topar con” something. And what are we going to “topar con”? A lot of traffic. |
| Fernando: “Mucho tráfico”. |
| JP: “Mucho tráfico”. “Tráfico” obviously means “traffic”, “mucho tráfico”, “a lot of traffic”, and when is it going to happen? |
| Fernando: “Later”, “después”. |
| JP: “Después”. “It could be but we are going to run into a lot of traffic later.” |
| Fernando: “Puede ser pero nos vamos a topar con mucho tráfico después”. |
| JP: Mauricio says “that’s right, this indeed will happen.” |
| Fernando: “Eso sí”. |
| JP: “Eso sí”, “that’s true.” |
| Fernando: “Aparte es mejor esperar en el estadio con una fría”. |
| JP: Okay, now the most interesting word to me is “the cold one”. How do you say that? |
| Fernando: “Una fría”. |
| JP: “Una fría”, this is a beer. |
| Fernando: I would think so. |
| JP: I mean in English we could say “a cold one.” So “with a cold one.” |
| Fernando: “Con una fría”. |
| JP: “Con una fría”. They want to be in the stadium with a cold one. |
| Fernando: “En el estadio con una fría”. |
| JP: “En el estadio con una fría”. We already said that the word for “stadium” is “el estadio”. The word for “to wait”? |
| Fernando: “Esperar”. |
| JP: “Esperar”, they want to wait in the stadium. “Esperar en el estadio con una fría”. What Mauricio is saying is that “it’s better to wait in the stadium with a cold one.” |
| Fernando: “Es mejor esperar en el estadio con una fría”. |
| JP: Exacto. “Es mejor esperar en el estadio con una fría”. Now he starts the whole sentence with “aparte”. |
| Fernando: Besides! |
| JP: Yes, it means “besides.” So let’s put it together. “That’s true, besides, it’s better to wait in the stadium with a cold one.” |
| Fernando: “Eso sí. Aparte es mejor esperar en el estadio con una fría”. |
| JP: Even though you are leaving early it’s better to sit in the stadium and have a beer than to sit in traffic. |
| Fernando: Yes. |
| JP: And (inaudible 04:20) not have a beer. |
| Fernando: Right. Let’s move on to vocabulary. |
| JP: Let’s do that. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Fernando: “Deber”. |
| JP: “Should”, “ought to.” |
| Fernando: “De-ber”, “deber”. “Temprano”. |
| JP: “Early.” |
| Fernando: “Tem-pra-no”, “temprano”. “Todavía”. |
| JP: “Still”, “yet”, “nevertheless.” |
| Fernando: “Todavía”, “todavía”. “Toparse”. |
| JP: “To come upon.” |
| Fernando: “To-par-se”, “toparse”. “Una fría”. |
| JP: “A cold one”, “a cold beer.” |
| Fernando: “U-na frí-a”, “una fría”. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| JP: Fernando, we are going to hustle through these vocabulary because it’s really not much to say. How do you want to start? |
| Fernando: Let’s start with “deber”. |
| JP: We’ll start with “deber” but we are also going to talk about that in the grammar section. So for now I just want to mention that “deber” means “must” or “should” or actually “to owe” as well. |
| Fernando: And this is the modal verb we’ll be using as well. |
| JP: “Deber”. What’s next? |
| Fernando: “Temprano”. |
| JP: “Temprano” means “early”, the opposite is “tarde”. |
| Fernando: “Late.” |
| JP: “Temprano” means “early.” Okay, what’s next? |
| Fernando: “Todavía”. |
| JP: “Todavía” means “still.” So if I want to say “I’m still hungry”... |
| Fernando: “Todavía tengo hambre”. |
| JP: “Todavía tengo hambre”. “Still, I am hungry.” |
| Fernando: “Toparse”. |
| JP: “Toparse”, we don’t have something like this in English, the closest we can say is “to come upon.” “Toparse”, it’s when you are going somewhere and you run into something. Sometimes it can be a surprise. |
| Fernando: “Una fría”. |
| JP: “Una fría”. Okay, this is the colloquial phrase for “a cold beer.” |
| Fernando: Pretty simple. |
| JP: Literally it’s the word “one”, “una”, and the word for “cold” which is “fría”, “una fría”, “cold one.” Shall we move on to the grammar? |
| Fernando: Let’s move on to the grammar. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| JP: As promised we are going to talk about the verb “deber” which means “to owe” but it also, as a modal verb, means “should” or “must.” And “deber” is actually a very easy verb for beginners to learn because the forms of “deber” are very simple, in-fact it’s conjugated regularly. Now the cool thing about “deber” is that it’s a modal verb and that is it’s followed directly by an infinitive. Now this is cool for people that are learning Spanish because you will be able to say a lot of things even though you don’t know how to conjugate a lot of verbs. If you just know how to conjugate “deber” and then throw in an infinitive afterwards, you’ll probably be able to get your point across. So let’s practice saying this, if I want to say “I must eat”... |
| Fernando: “Yo debo comer”. |
| JP: “Yo debo comer”, at the end you’ve got the infinitive “comer” and it’s not conjugated in any way, it’s still the same dictionary form, “comer”. At the beginning of the sentence, we have “deber” conjugated in the first person, “yo debo”. That’s exactly as we expected, it’s not irregular in any way, “debo comer”, “I must eat.” How about “you must eat”, Fernando? |
| Fernando: “Debes comer”. |
| JP: “Debes comer”. “He/she must eat”? |
| Fernando: “Él/ella debe comer”. |
| JP: “Debe comer”, muy bien. “They must eat”... |
| Fernando: “Ellos deben comer”. |
| JP: “Ellos deben comer”. As you see, “debo”, “debes”, “debe”, “debemos”, “debéis”, “deben”, that “deber” is regular in all forms and it’s followed by an infinitive, that’s a verb in the dictionary form. Fernando, let’s give one more example. Let’s use a different verb because we are always talking about eating, we are always using “comer”, let’s see another verb we can use. |
| Fernando: “Viajar”. |
| JP: “Viajar” means “to travel”, so if I want to say “you all must travel”... |
| Fernando: “Ustedes deben viajar”. |
| JP: “Ustedes deben viajar”. Fernando, “we should travel.” You and I should go places. |
| Fernando: “Nosotros debemos viajar”. |
| JP: “Nosotros debemos viajar”. In this case you have “viajar” in the infinitive and “deber” in the present tense, “debemos viajar”. |
Outro |
| JP: That’s it for today. So we’ve got to go, ¡hasta luego! |
| Fernando: ¡Adiós! |
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