| Hola! Mi nombre es Romina. ¡Mucho gusto! |
| “Hello! My name is Romina. Nice to meet you!” |
| Today, I have a very good topic for you. Today, we’re gonna talk about contracciones en español. Today, we’re gonna talk about contractions in Spanish, Spanish contractions, okay, which sounds people like giving birth, but it’s not. And, although, contracciones sounds really difficult to pronounce in Spanish, if you practice a few times, it’s not so hard. |
| Repetir… |
| Contracciones |
| Contracciones |
| Contracciones |
| There you go! |
| You are gonna be extremely happy to learn contractions in Spanish and let me tell you why. First, if your language, if your mother language is English, you have so many contractions in English, okay? |
| Instead of saying, “I do not”, you say, “I don’t.” |
| That’s a contraction. |
| Instead of saying the whole two words, you fuse these two into one. |
| You just say, “I don’t.” |
| You are saving time and you are saving energy, okay? It’s all about the economy of the language, that’s why contractions occur. And because English is such as a practical language, you have heaps of contractions to be learned, right? |
| Same thing if your language...if your first language is Italian or maybe you are also learning Italian alongside with Spanish. I’m not sure. I haven’t learned Italian myself, but I heard that they have about like 12 or 16 contractions, okay? |
| But in Spanish, good news amigos, muy buenas noticias “we only have two.” |
| Yes, only two. |
| Yay! |
| Okay. |
| So these two contractions are only happening with “two prepositions,” dos preposiciones en español. |
| La primera preposición, “the first preposition” that’s gonna have this contraction is la preposición A. It’s with the preposition A, okay? This preposition will have different translations depending on the context, of course, but usually translated as...as direction to, for, you know, it really has many translations. |
| There are other videos where we explain the different meanings of the preposition A. Definitely, go back to those. Today, I’m just focusing in the contractions and not quite on the meaning of each of these prepositions, okay? Just briefly, I want you to remember that A usually is translated as “to,” okay? |
| La otra prepo...la otra preposición que tiene una contracción en español es la preposición DE. |
| Another preposition that has a contraction in Spanish is the preposition DE which usually means, depending on the context of like, the preposition of, yeah, the preposition of...and of course, many other meanings. Definitely go back to other videos where we explained this as well. |
| Okay, so how this contraction works in Spanish? |
| Basically, when either of these two prepositions mix with the article, the male or masculine-singular article, El, which in English is gonna be translated as “the,” when you have the preposition A + El, okay, I have a little chart for you here. I hope you can see this clearly. So basically, what’s gonna happen is that if you have the preposition A + El, it becomes Al, okay? |
| Please repeat... |
| Al |
| Al |
| Very good. |
| But if you have the preposition De followed by el, so in Spanish, it sounds a little bit weird if you say De el, De-el, okay. Even now that I’m saying it, I feel that I’m sounding retarded. So what we do is we contract these two. |
| De + el becomes Del. |
| Del |
| Del |
| So that’s it. Those are the only two contractions we have in Spanish. |
| Let’s practice, okay, because if we don’t practice, we forget what we just learned. |
| Please complete the following process with Spanish contractions. |
| Bolivia y Paraguay están al Norte de Argentina. |
| El agua del mar es salada. |
| ¿Vamos al cine? |
| Vengo del doctor. |
| Okay, so the contractions that we just learned are the official contractions of Spanish. What I’m trying to say is that they are widely spread in our language, okay? People say those contractions and they’re grammatically correct in Spain, in Mexico, in Colombia, in Paraguay, in any country where we speak Spanish, okay? We are gonna be using this con… cons… contractions, okay? They are formal…they are formally accepted in our language. |
| But, we have more contractions that are not widely spread, meaning that some regions will be using these contractions and they’re quite known by other people, but it doesn’t mean that we all use it and they’re not accepted as such. In formal situations, for example, you wouldn’t use these contractions, okay? |
| So the first one I wanna show you is a contraction of another preposition which is the preposition para, okay? So instead of saying the whole word, instead of saying para, we get rid of the -RA, okay? |
| Instead of saying, para arriba, we say pa՛arriba. |
| Instead of saying, ¿para qué?, we are going to say ¿pa՛qué? |
| Repetir por favor… |
| Pa՛arriba |
| ¿Pa՛qué? |
| Pa՛arriba |
| ¿Pa՛qué? |
| They’re really, informal, okay, so do not use these ones if you’re talking to an elderly person, if you’re talking to, I don’t know, someone that is not hierarchy, higher than yourself, okay? Please, don’t use these ones. |
| Another one that I found adorable in Spanish, I also really love it, I don’t use it myself, but I...when I hear other people using this one in Spanish, I just love it. And it’s when they drop the D between vowels, okay? |
| For example, some dialects of Cuba, instead of saying pescado which means fish, right, they will say pescao. |
| Repetir. |
| Pescao |
| Pescao |
| Another one is that when they’re using the participle, they will...they will drop the D as well. I’ve heard this quite a lot in Spain, for example, in Barcelona, I think, and this is, for example, instead of saying has comprado… |
| “Have you bought the car?” ¿Has comprado el auto? |
| They will say, ¿Has comprao el auto? which is very cute. |
| Please repeat. |
| Has comprao |
| Has comprao |
| And another one that we use quite a lot is with the verb estar, okay? |
| So, instead of saying está, the whole thing, we just say ˊta. |
| Again, this is very informal, so please make sure you only use it in very informal situations with people that you feel very comfortable with. |
| So, for example, instead of saying está bien or está mal, you’re gonna say… |
| ˊTa bien |
| ˊTa bien |
| ˊTa mal |
| ˊTa mal |
| Okay amigos, muchas gracias por ver este video. Today, I had a lot of fun making this video. I hope that you enjoyed it yourself as well. Again, muchisimas gracias for watching and I will see you next time. Nos vemos. ¡Adiós! |
Comments
Hide