Learn about telling someone to do something
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Lizy: Buenos días, me llamo Lizy. |
| Alan: Hi, Alan La Rue here. “Come Here, I will be right there.” |
| Lizy: Muy buenos días, Alan. |
| Alan: ¡Hola Lizy! ¿qué hay nuevo? |
| Lizy: Not much. How about you? |
| Alan: I’ve been doing well, thanks. So today we have another newbie lesson. |
| Lizy: That’s right, lesson 21. |
| Alan: Lizy, where does today’s conversation take place? |
| Lizy: In Caracas, Venezuela. Rosana is in the “patio” and Tomás is upstairs and these two call back and forth to each other. |
| Alan: So in a way, this is a long distance conversation. |
| Lizy: Aha, well they are calling to each other through the house. |
| Alan: And do you think that the language we use for this conversation is different than if they were in the same room. |
| Lizy: Definitely. |
| Alan: Well, it will be interesting to see why as we go through this lesson. |
| Lizy: I agree. We will learn how to say “come here” and also how to respond, “I will be right there.” |
| Alan: Now, when you say “come here”, it sounds like you are giving a command. So is this going to be in the imperative mood? |
| Lizy: You got it. |
| Alan: So then we will be building on what we looked at last time in newbie lesson 20. |
| Lizy: Right. Now you should also keep your eyes out for regional lessons that reference this newbie lesson. |
| Alan: That’s right. While you might be thinking to yourself how am I supposed to learn regional forms of speech if I don’t even know the basics. The fact of the matter is that Spanish is a living language and it’s used in a number of ways across multiple regions. |
| Lizy: And with the Iberian, Costa Rican and Peruvian series, you get a taste of European, Central American and South American Spanish. |
| Alan: Nice variety. |
| Lizy: Well, we’ve got a lot to cover today. |
| Alan: Do you want to move on to the conversation then? |
| Lizy: ¡Sí, vamos! |
| DIALOGUE |
| ROSANA: ¡Tomás, ven para acá! |
| TOMÁS: ¿Dónde estás, Rosana? |
| ROSANA: Estoy en el patio. |
| TOMÁS: Ya voy para allá. |
| Alan: And now slower. Una vez más esta vez lentamente. |
| ROSANA: ¡Tomás, ven para acá! |
| TOMÁS: ¿Dónde estás, Rosana? |
| ROSANA: Estoy en el patio. |
| TOMÁS: Ya voy para allá. |
| Alan: And now with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| ROSANA: ¡Tomás, ven para acá! |
| ROSANA: Tomás, come here! |
| TOMÁS: ¿Dónde estás, Rosana? |
| TOMÁS: Where are ya', Rosana? |
| ROSANA: Estoy en el patio. |
| ROSANA: I'm on the patio. |
| TOMÁS: Ya voy para allá. |
| TOMÁS: I'll be right there. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Lizy: This is such a classic image. |
| Alan: Right, with one person in the courtyard and the other upstairs. |
| Lizy: Courtyard? |
| Alan: Well, right I guess it’s not necessarily a courtyard since many houses in Latin America have two “patios”. |
| Lizy: Right. In many traditional houses, there is a front “patio” between the street entrance and the house entrance and then a back “patio” between the back of the house and the divider wall where the neighbor’s property begins. |
| Alan: One of my favorite things about “patios” here in Lima is that in the old houses, I mean the old colonial houses, the back patterns have gardens and even beautiful fountains. It really brings alive an image of how things used to be. |
| Lizy: Yes, you are right and I’d like to tell you that here in Lima, we have many beautiful houses from the colonial period with a “patio” that you are referring to. |
| Alan: That’s right, Lizy. Well, now that we’ve gone through the conversation, what do you say we run through some of the vocabulary? |
| Lizy: Sounds like a good idea. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Alan: So let’s begin with... |
| Lizy: “Venir”. |
| Alan: “To come.” |
| Lizy: “Ve-nir”, “venir”. |
| Alan: And next... |
| Lizy: “Acá”. |
| Alan: “Here, “over here.” |
| Lizy: “A-cá”, “acá”. |
| Alan: Now we will listen to... |
| Lizy: “Patio”. |
| Alan: “Patio.” |
| Lizy: “Pa-tio”, “patio”. |
| Alan: Now we will hear... |
| Lizy: “Ya”. |
| Alan: “Now”, “already.” |
| Lizy: “Ya”, “ya”. |
| Alan: Let’s hear... |
| Lizy: “Ir”. |
| Alan: “To go.” |
| Lizy: “Ir”, “ir”. |
| Alan: And finally... |
| Lizy: “Allá”. |
| Alan: “There”, “over there.” |
| Lizy: “A-llá”, “allá”. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Lizy: This word “ya” is one that always comes up in Spanish, isn’t it? |
| Alan: Yes, there are so many different uses of it. |
| Lizy: Claro, por ejemplo “ya basta”, which means “enough”, “already” or “ya quiero comer”, “I want to eat now.” |
| Alan: Right, so we want to remember that it means both “already” and “now.” |
| Lizy: And that there are another meanings too. |
| Alan: True. |
| Lizy: In fact, let’s look at this word again in the grammar section of today’s lesson. |
| Alan: Me parece muy bien. Sounds good to me. Lizy, that’s nice to hear the word broken down like that. It really let’s you hear exactly how each syllable is pronounced. |
| Lizy: Great. |
| Alan: Now that we’ve looked at these words briefly, let’s take some time and deepen our understanding of a few of them. |
| Lizy: Only if we start out with a verb “venir”. |
| Alan: Your wish is my command. |
| Lizy: So what does the verb “venir” mean? |
| Alan: It means “to come.” |
| Lizy: And if I say “vienes a la casa” what does this mean? |
| Alan: “Vienes a la casa” it means “you come to the house” or “you come home” or even “you are coming over.” |
| Lizy: There are a few different ways to put it. |
| Alan: Yes. |
| Lizy: And do you remember how last time we learned how to say “you are right”? |
| Alan: Sure it was “tienes razón”. |
| Lizy: Now do the verb “vienes”, “you come” and “tienes”, “you have” look anything like? |
| Alan: Well, there is just one funny thing that I noticed. |
| Lizy: What’s that? |
| Alan: Well, how do we say “to come” in Spanish? |
| Lizy: It’s “venir”. |
| Alan: Right .And what about “to have”? |
| Lizy: It’s “tener”. |
| Alan: Great. So with the verb forms “vienes” and “tienes” there is a stem change here. |
| Lizy: And how does it change? |
| Alan: Basically the “E” in the stem of “venir” and “tener” changes to an “ie”. So from “venir”, “vienes” and from “tener”, “tienes”. |
| Lizy: So we will want to remember that those two verbs are conjugated the same way even though they are not regular verbs. |
| Alan: Well, now let’s move on and look at the verb “ir”. |
| Lizy: This is a really important one. |
| Alan: Yeah, you can even go as far as to say that it’s one of the most important verbs in the language. |
| Lizy: Right. Now we will be looking at this in depth soon enough but for now let’s just remember that it means “to go.” |
| Alan: It’s a pretty short verb, isn’t it? |
| Lizy: Yeah, it’s just spelled “ir”. |
| Alan: All right. So we will hold off going too far into it. So what about the word “acá”. This is a good one to talk about. |
| Lizy: Okay. Where should we start? |
| Alan: Well, if I say “he lives here” what does the verb “here” describe? |
| Lizy: It describes where he lives. |
| Alan: So if I say “él vive acá” this word “acá” is a lot like the word “here”, “in this place.” |
| Lizy: And there is a variation in this word too right? |
| Alan: Right. You can say “acá” or “aquí” and the meanings are pretty much the same. |
| Lizy: Now there is another word that’s related to this one, “acá”. |
| Alan: Which one is that? |
| Lizy: Well, if we say “él vive acá” in order to say “he lives here”, then how do we say “he lives there”? |
| Alan: Ah, I see. So we are looking for the same kind of word as “acá” that is an adverb but one that describes something “there”, “in that place.” |
| Lizy: Right. |
| Alan: We would say “él vive allá”. |
| Lizy: Right, “él vive allá”. And just like we say “acá” changes to “aquí” without altering its meaning. This word “allá” can change to “ahí” and again the meaning stays the same for the most part. |
| Alan: Now Lizy, this probably sounds confusing to some of our listeners. I mean which set should a new student go with? |
| Lizy: Well, it’s not that simple. The thing is that whether we use “acá” or “aquí” as well as “allá” or “ahí” depends on the region we are speaking. |
| Alan: Right. They tend to get swapped pretty often, don’t they? |
| Lizy: Yes or you are best of learning the four of them together. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Alan: So why don’t we switch it up now and move on to the grammar for today? |
| Lizy: Sounds good. |
| Alan: So we said that we are going to continue learning about commands in Spanish, right? |
| Lizy: That’s right. |
| Alan: And what does a command or “un mandato express”? |
| Lizy: It expresses the speaker’s desire for the action to occur or not to occur. |
| Alan: So if I say to you, “come over here”, I am expressing my wish for you to come over here? |
| Lizy: Right. |
| Alan: And how do we say to come in Spanish? |
| Lizy: It’s just “venir”. |
| Alan: And is that the form that you’d find in the dictionary? |
| Lizy: Yeah, it’s a infinitive “venir”, “to come.” |
| Alan: So what’s the stem of this verb? |
| Lizy: Well, if I remove the ending from the infinitive, I get “ven-” spelled “v-e-n”. |
| Alan: Now in the conversation, we heard Rosana say “¡Tomás, ven para acá!” and this was translated as “Tomás come here.” |
| Lizy: Right. |
| Alan: So we can say that the verb form “ven” spelled “v-e-n” expresses the command come. |
| Lizy: Yes, we can. And in the conversation, does it seem like Rosana and Tomás are speaking formally or informally? |
| Alan: Definitely informally. |
| Lizy: But we’ve said that these commands can be either formal or informal, right? |
| Alan: Right. |
| Lizy: So what would this formal command be? |
| Alan: We could say “venga” as in “venga usted conmigo”, “come with me sir” or something like that. |
| Lizy: Right. So the form is “venga” for the formal command and “ven” for the informal. |
| Alan: And they both mean “come.” |
| Lizy: Now there is another expression that we definitely need to cover today. |
| Alan: What is it? |
| Lizy: “Ya voy para allá”. |
| Alan: Ah, this is a great one. It’s a good response to learn with a command we just looked at. |
| Lizy: So let’s say that you are upstairs and I call to you, “Alan, come here.” If you are about to come to where I am in the “patio”, what might you yell back? |
| Alan: I’d probably say something like “I will be right there.” |
| Lizy: And when you say, “I will be right there”, you mean “I am leaving now right”? |
| Alan: Right. |
| Lizy: And by there, you mean “over there”, right? |
| Alan: Uhoo yes. |
| Lizy: So how do you say “now” in Spanish? |
| Alan: Well, one way is with the word “ya”. |
| Lizy: Right, “ya”. And how do we say “I go” or “I am going”? |
| Alan: That would be “voy”. |
| Lizy: Right. Now so far we have “ya voy” and what about “over there”. How do you say this? |
| Alan: That would be “para allá”. |
| Lizy: So if we say “ya voy para allá” does this mean “now I go over there”? |
| Alan: Well, only if you translate it literally. |
| Lizy: Then, figuratively? |
| Alan: Figuratively it means something like “I will be right there” or “I will be right over.” |
| Lizy: And there is a shortened form of this too, isn’t there? |
| Alan: Yes and you can cut it short and just say “ya voy” and it pretty much means the same thing. |
| Lizy: So Alan, today we’ve studied a conversation that takes place between two people calling back and forth to each other. |
| Alan: Right. |
| Lizy: Let me ask you, when your wife says “¡Alan, ven para acá!”, how do you usually respond? |
| Alan: “¡Ahora mismo mi amor!”. “Right away honey!” |
| Lizy: Oh, I think she has you well trained. |
Outro |
| Alan: Right, she does. Well I guess that about does it for today. So until next time. |
| Lizy: ¡Hasta la próxima! |
| Alan: ¡Chao! |
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