Learn how to issue directive commands using the imperative tense
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Fernando: “You’re so controlling when you speak Spanish.” JP, I don’t feel you are controlling when you speak Spanish and hey, how are you? |
| JP: I’m fine, thanks. How are you? |
| Fernando: Good, not as controlling. |
| JP: Good, I’m glad we got that straightened away. Tell us what we are talking about in this lesson. |
| Fernando: In this lesson, you will learn about commands in the familiar register. This conversation takes place at a home and the conversation is between Peter and his mother. The speakers will be using the familiar register. |
| JP: Alright, let’s listen to this conversation between Peter and his mum. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Peter: ¿Ya está el desayuno? |
| Mamá: Dame cinco minutos más. |
| Peter: ¡Tengo mucha hambre! |
| Mamá: Y yo tengo el control. Baja en cinco. |
| Peter: Is breakfast ready yet? |
| Mom: Give me five more minutes. |
| Peter: I'm so hungry! |
| Mom: And I'm in control. Come down in five minutes. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Fernando: My mum or dad would do the same thing. |
| JP: Really? |
| Fernando: Yes. |
| JP: I don’t know how anyone can do that. I can’t make breakfast for myself every day. |
| Fernando: You can’t? I can. I try to at least. |
| JP: Do you? |
| Fernando: Yes. |
| JP: Well, I make sure you usually buy breakfast. Anyway, Peter is upstairs and he’s asking his mother if his breakfast is ready yet. |
| Fernando: “¿Ya está el desayuno?” |
| JP: What’s our word for “breakfast”? |
| Fernando: “Desayuno”. |
| JP: “Desayuno”. So “breakfast”, “el desayuno”, and he’s asking if it’s ready. Now what’s our expression for asking if something is ready? |
| Fernando: “¿Ya está?” |
| JP: “¿Ya está?” It’s two words but we are not going to analyze them, instead we are just going to say… |
| Fernando: They stand out by themselves. |
| JP: Yes. We are going to say that it’s an expression that’s asking if something is ready, “¿ya está?”. And in-fact the answer can be “ya está”, “it’s ready.” In this case, “is the breakfast ready?” |
| Fernando: “¿Ya está el desayuno?” |
| JP: And mum says, “Give me five more minutes”. |
| Fernando: “Dame cinco minutos más”. |
| JP: Okay, she starts with “give me.” |
| Fernando: “Dame”. |
| JP: “Dame”, that’s “give” and “me”, and all in one word, “dame”, and then five minutes. |
| Fernando: “Cinco”, which is “five”, “minutos”. |
| JP: “Cinco minutos”. “Minutos” means “minutes”, “cinco minutos”. When we want to say “five more minutes”... |
| Fernando: “Cinco minutos más”. |
| JP: “Cinco minutos más”. Notice the order of this, “five minutes more”, “cinco minutos más”. In English we’d say “five more minutes” so the order is a little bit switcheroo there, but let’s put it all together. “Give me five more minutes.” |
| Fernando: “Dame cinco minutos más”. |
| JP: Peter is not having five more minutes, he’s protesting. |
| Fernando: “¡Tengo mucha hambre!” |
| JP: “¡Tengo mucha hambre!”. This is an idiomatic expression in Spanish. In English we’d say “I am hungry”, in Spanish we actually say “I have hunger”, “tengo hambre”. So Fernando, what’s our word for “hunger”? |
| Fernando: “Hambre”. |
| JP: “Hambre”, and the verb “I have”… |
| Fernando: “Tengo”. |
| JP: “Tengo”. To say “I have hunger”? |
| Fernando: “Tengo hambre”. |
| JP: “Tengo hambre”, “I am hungry”, “I have hunger.” If I have a lot of hunger... |
| Fernando: “Tengo mucha hambre”. |
| JP: “¡Tengo mucha hambre!”, that’s what Peter is saying. “¡Tengo mucha hambre!”, “I am so hungry!” And mama is going to say “I have got it under control.” |
| Fernando: “Yo tengo el control”. |
| JP: “Yo tengo el control”. |
| Fernando: And what she means actually is “I am in control so I will tell you when breakfast is ready.” |
| JP: Okay, I’ve got it covered. |
| Fernando: I’ve got it covered, stop whining. |
| JP: Okay. So what’s our word for “control”? |
| Fernando: “Control”. |
| JP: “Control”, it looks exactly the same as in English. |
| Fernando: And almost sounds the same if you have a Spanish accent. |
| JP: Yes, just a little tropical, right? “Control”. |
| Fernando: “Control”. |
| JP: We heard the verb “I have” again. “Tengo”, “Tengo el control”, “I am in control.” |
| Fernando: “Yo tengo el control”. |
| JP: She’s emphasizing, “I am in control”, right? She say “yo tengo el control”. |
| Fernando: “Yo tengo el control”. |
| JP: He says “I have hunger” and she says “I have control.” There is nothing he can do about it. |
| Fernando: Exactly. |
| JP: So she says, “come down in five.” |
| Fernando: “Baja en cinco”. |
| JP: “Baja en cinco”. Now we already said that “cinco” means “five”. Fernando, tell us the command again. |
| Fernando: “Baja”. |
| JP: “Baja”. “Baja” is “to go down”, “to descend”, and we assume that she is saying to come downstairs. “Baja en cinco”, “come down in five.” Shall we take a look at the vocab? |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Fernando: Yes. “Tener hambre”. |
| JP: “To be hungry.” |
| Fernando: “Te-ner ham-bre”, “tener hambre”. “Bajar”. |
| JP: “To descend.” |
| Fernando: “Ba-jar”, “bajar”. “Ya está”. |
| JP: “It’s ready”, “it’s done.” |
| Fernando: “Ya es-tá”, “ya está”. “El desayuno”. |
| JP: “Breakfast.” |
| Fernando: “El de-sa-yu-no”, “el desayuno”. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| JP: Fernando these words are so important. I use these words all the time. |
| Fernando: “Ya está”. |
| JP: Did you want to start with “ya está”? |
| Fernando: “Ya está”. |
| JP: Alright, it means “it’s ready”, “it’s done.” Actually we already talked about it so let’s move on to the next one, “ya está”. |
| Fernando: “El desayuno”. |
| JP: “El desayuno”. This is the word for “breakfast”, and just like English means break the fast, you are fasting and you break it, “el desayuno” kind of means the same thing. We have the word for “fast” in there… |
| Fernando: “Ayuno”. |
| JP: And we are un-fasting, right? |
| Fernando: “Des”. |
| JP: “Des-ayuno”. So those of you that like etymology, “el desayuno”, “breakfast”, “el desayuno”. |
| Fernando: And those of you that like breakfast, well, breakfast. |
| JP: You know what? That makes me hungry. |
| Fernando: The next expression is “tener hambre”. |
| JP: “Tener hambre”, “to have hunger”, “to be hungry.” We’ve already explained this, there is a few idiomatic expressions in Spanish that use “tener”, not just “to be hungry”, “tener hambre”, but also... “to be thirsty”! |
| Fernando: “Tener sed”. |
| JP: Or “to be sleepy.” |
| Fernando: “Tener sueño”. |
| JP: Or “to be in a hurry.” |
| Fernando: “Tener apuro”. |
| JP: The one we are looking at today is “to be hungry.” |
| Fernando: “Tener hambre”. |
| JP: “Tener hambre”. |
| Fernando: Last one, “bajar”. |
| JP: “Bajar”, literally “to descend” or “to go down.” Notice that in English the mum would say “come down in five minutes” and the words we use in English are “come down”, so there’s an action “come” and a direction “down”. In Spanish, it’s all combined, it’s combined into the word “bajar” which means “come down” or “go down” or “descend” or many other things, it’s a very versatile word, you “bajar” out of a car for example, in Spanish... |
| Fernando: “Bájate del auto”. |
| JP: Or you go downstairs. |
| Fernando: “Baja al primer piso”. |
| JP: Ok, “go down on the first floor.” Or you can lower the volume of something. |
| Fernando: “Baja el tono de tu voz”, “bájale a la música”. |
| JP: Okay, “lower the tone of your voice” or “lower the volume of the music.” It seems like a very… |
| Fernando: It’s a very versatile verb. |
| JP: It is. It’s supercharged, compared to the English “go and down.” |
| Fernando: Let’s move on to the grammar point. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| JP: Let’s do that. |
| Fernando: What are we talking about today? |
| JP: We are going to talk about directive commands in the familiar register. For example, the mum in this dialogue said “give me five more minutes.” |
| Fernando: “Dame cinco minutos más”. |
| JP: “Dame cinco minutos más”. That “dame” is the verb “dar” and it’s a directive command in the familiar register. It’s familiar because she is not talking formally to Peter and it’s a directive command because she is telling him to do something. She is not prohibiting, she is directing. “Give me five more minutes.” |
| Fernando: “Dame cinco minutos más”. |
| JP: Okay, she uses another directive command when she says “come down in five.” |
| Fernando: “Baja en cinco”. |
| JP: “Baja en cinco”. That “baja” is a familiar register directive command of the verb “bajar”, “to go down”, “come down in five”, “baja en cinco”. Alright the title of this grammar point is a little outrageous, “the directive commands in the familiar register”, it sounds very complicated. Basically all it is, is telling somebody to do something and it’s very simple to make in Spanish… |
| Fernando: It’s very common as well. |
| JP: It’s very common, absolutely. To form a directive command in the familiar register, to tell someone to do something, all you have to do is use a form of the verb that’s exactly the same as the third person singular. If you know how to conjugate a verb in the present tense, then just give the “he” or “she” form basically. For example, give us a verb, Fernando. |
| Fernando: “Sing.” |
| JP: “To sing.” |
| Fernando: Yes. |
| JP: How do you say that in Spanish? |
| Fernando: “Cantar”. |
| JP: “Cantar”. If I say “he sings”, how do I say “he sings”? |
| Fernando: “Él canta”. |
| JP: “Él canta”. That verb form, “canta”, is the same form you are going to use to tell someone to do something. I’m going to tell Fernando to sing right now, you are ready? “Fernando, canta”. |
| Fernando: Let me clear my voice. |
| JP: Maybe later. |
| Fernando: Okay. |
| JP: Maybe it’s not a great idea to do it now. |
| Fernando: Wow, that was close! |
| JP: Okay, give us another verb. |
| Fernando: Let’s see what else is out there. “Dance”, “to dance.” |
| JP: “To dance”, alright. What’s that verb in Spanish? |
| Fernando: “Bailar”. |
| JP: “Bailar”. If you tell someone to dance... |
| Fernando: You are not going to tell me to dance are you? |
| JP: Well, you can tell me. You can tell me first. How do you tell someone to dance? |
| Fernando: “JP, baila”. |
| JP: Now? |
| Fernando: That was awkward, people. |
| JP: Okay, “baila”. It happens to be the same form as the third person singular “he dances”, “él baila”. |
| Fernando: You’ll thank me because this is not a webcast. |
| JP: It’s not that bad, Fernando. Alright let’s do one more, let’s do a complicated verb, let’s do a stem changing verb. |
| Fernando: How about “to sleep”? |
| JP: “To sleep.” How do you say “to sleep” in Spanish? |
| Fernando: “Dormir”. |
| JP: “Dormir”. And how do you say “he sleeps”? |
| Fernando: “Él duerme”. |
| JP: “Él duerme”. So we are going to use that same form to tell Fernando to go to sleep. “Fernando, ¡duerme!” |
| Fernando: That’s the worst snore ever. |
| JP: You know what? I think our listeners are going to be very appreciative of your audio-acting, Fernando. |
| Fernando: Thank you, thank you. |
Outro |
| JP: Right now it’s time to go, so ¡hasta luego! |
| Fernando: Adiós. |
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