Learn how to ask about others
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Lizy: Muy buenos días, me llamo Lizy Stoliar. ¿Cómo están?¿Cómo estás, Alan? |
| Alan: Hello all, I am fine Lizy. My name is Alan. Welcome all of you to spanishpod101. |
| Lizy: Sean muy bienvenidos. |
| Alan: Hi everyone. |
| Lizy: My name is Lizy Stoliar and I am joined by “El Maestro de los maestros”, the founder of “El Sol”, Spanish Language School, señor Alan La Rue. |
| Alan: Wahoo, what an introduction Lizy! It’s great to be here. How are you? |
| Lizy: Excelente. Hi everyone and welcome to the second lesson of the newbie series in spanishpod101.com. I think so with spanishpod101 podcasts, you learn at your own pace. |
| Alan: And on your own terms. You have total educational freedom and you can listen over and over and over again working this curriculum into your own method. |
| Lizy: Today we are picking up where we left off last time. |
| Alan: That’s right. In our first lesson, we looked at the verb “estar” in Spanish which is one of the ways of saying “to be.” |
| Lizy: In today’s conversation, we meet José and Beatriz. |
| Alan: And tell us what are they doing? |
| Lizy: Well Alan, they are having a conversation that takes place all the time when you are speaking about more than one person. |
| Alan: All right. Let’s get into today’s conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| JOSÉ: ¿Cómo están Claudia y tú? |
| BEATRIZ: Nosotras estamos bien. |
| JOSÉ: ¿Y cómo están Cristina y Javier? |
| BEATRIZ: Ellos también están bien. |
| JOSÉ: ¡Qué bueno! |
| Alan: And now slower. Una vez más esta vez lentamente. |
| JOSÉ: ¿Cómo están Claudia y tú? |
| BEATRIZ: Nosotras estamos bien. |
| JOSÉ: ¿Y cómo están Cristina y Javier? |
| BEATRIZ: Ellos también están bien. |
| JOSÉ: ¡Qué bueno! |
| Alan: And now with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| JOSÉ: ¿Cómo están Claudia y tú? |
| JOSÉ: How are you and Claudia? |
| BEATRIZ: Nosotras estamos bien. |
| BEATRIZ: We are well. |
| JOSÉ: ¿Y cómo están Cristina y Javier? |
| JOSÉ: And how are Cristina and Javier? |
| BEATRIZ: Ellos también están bien. |
| BEATRIZ: They are well too. |
| JOSÉ: ¡Qué bueno! |
| JOSÉ: Great! |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Alan: Well this is definitely a light conversation. |
| Lizy: Don’t you have a term for this in English? |
| Alan: Yep, it’s called small talk. |
| Lizy: Small talk? |
| Alan: Yeah and if you run into an acquaintance or a friend who you haven’t seen in a while, this is polite conversation. |
| Lizy: Ahh, small talk. |
| Alan: Right. So we see that the answer to the question “¿cómo están?”? Here is... |
| Lizy: “Estamos bien”. |
| Alan: And that means? |
| Lizy: “We are well.” |
| Alan: That’s right okay. Now unless you are being really polite, there are other ways to answer the question “¿cómo están?” Right, Liz? |
| Lizy: Sure sometimes you might be having a bad day or something… |
| Alan: Haha… so then if you were having a bad day, how could you answer the question? |
| Lizy: You could say “estoy más o menos” which is a singular form or in the plural “estamos más o menos”. |
| Alan: Umm so “I am doing more or less” or “we are more or less.” |
| Lizy: That’s the direct translation. |
| Alan: Well this shows how direct translations are tricky things. |
| Lizy: How so? |
| Alan: Well in English, we wouldn’t say, “I am doing more or less”. It’s more common here “I am doing okay.” |
| Lizy: I see. |
| Alan: Now let’s focus on how some of the words from today’s conversation sound. |
| Lizy: Great idea. |
| Alan: So let’s begin with |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Lizy: “Y”. |
| Alan: “And.” |
| Lizy: “Y”, “y”. |
| Alan: Now we will hear... |
| Lizy: “Nosotros”. |
| Alan: “We.” |
| Lizy: “No-so-tros”, “nosotros”. |
| Alan: Okay next let’s listen to... |
| Lizy: “Bien”. |
| Alan: “Well.” |
| Lizy: “Bien”, “bien”. |
| Alan: Next we will hear... |
| Lizy: “También”. |
| Alan: “Also”, “as well”, “too.” |
| Lizy: “Tam-bién”, “también”. |
| Alan: And finally... |
| Lizy: “¡Qué bueno!” |
| Alan: “Great”, “how great.” |
| Lizy: “Qué bue-no”, “¡qué bueno!” |
| Alan: Now there is a phrase that sticks out to me. |
| Lizy: What’s that? |
| Alan: “¡Qué bueno!” |
| Lizy: Ahh, sí. “¡Qué bueno!”, it’s a very good phrase to know. |
| Alan: Why? |
| Lizy: It is an exclamation. It tells the world that you are excited about something. |
| Alan: And that’s never a bad thing. So that means I can’t just say “qué bueno...” |
| Lizy: Note if you want the phrase to have the intended effect, you have to say it like you mean it. We don’t say “qué bueno…”, we say “¡qué bueno!”, with emotion, with feeling. |
| Alan: Right it’s almost as if that if you don’t really emphasize it, it could sound ironic like this, “qué bueno”. |
| Lizy: “Qué bueno…” |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Alan: All right. Now let’s have a look at the usage for some of the words. |
| Lizy: Where would you like to begin? |
| Alan: Well the first one we are going to look at today is an easy one. It is simply “y”. Lizy, can you give us an example, please? |
| Lizy: Por supuesto. Of course. “Tú y yo”. |
| Alan: “You and I”. So the word “y” spelled with a single letter “y” means “and”. Now the great thing about this word is that to create your own examples, all you have to do is to change the two nouns on each side of the word “y”. |
| Lizy: Right. For example, using two names, we can say “Mariana y Roberto”. |
| Alan: That’s right and that means “Mariana and Roberto”. |
| Lizy: Exactly. |
| Alan: All right. Moving right along. The next word we are going to look at is “nosotros”. Lizy, how about an example with “nosotros”. |
| Lizy: “Nosotros estamos tranquilos”. |
| Alan: That means “we are relaxed”. Now really listen to this one because you are going to be hearing it a lot. “Nosotros”. |
| Lizy: “Nosotros”. |
| Alan: So “nosotros” which means “we” is a personal pronoun like “yo” which means “I.” |
| Lizy: Both of these two are in the first person. How do they differ? |
| Alan: Good question. They differ in a major way. “Yo” is the singular and “nosotros” is the plural. I mean when someone says “yo” or “I”, only one person is being referred to which is why it’s called singular. One is singular but when someone says “we” or “nosotros” now more than one person is being referred to which is why it’s called plural. |
| Lizy: It’s not so hard when you put it that way. |
| Alan: Well the way I see it, that’s the real goal of this learning process. We’ve got to find ways to break the language down so that we can understand it and we start with the simplest things and we move on slowly and steadily to the more complex things. |
| Lizy: Very good advice. |
| Alan: Ah thanks. So the next word today is “también” Lizy, would you give us an example? |
| Lizy: “Yo también estoy cansada”. |
| Alan: “I too I am tired.” The word “también” is an adverb that means “too” or “as well”. Lizy, for example how would we say me “too”? |
| Lizy: If you want to say “me too”, then you would just say “yo también”. |
| Alan: Thanks okay. So let’s finish up today with “¡qué bueno!”. |
| Lizy: “¡Qué bueno estar aquí!” |
| Alan: “It’s great to be here!” So as we’ve said, what we have here is an exclamation, the expression “¡qué bueno!” means “great” or “how great.” |
| Lizy: Many times it is used on its own much alike the word “great” in English. |
| Alan: It must be said with emotion. |
| Lizy: Alan, as you know, we Latinos are very expressive people. |
| Alan: Isn’t that the truth? |
| Lizy: ¡Claro! Now from your experience, when can our students expect to use this expression “¡qué bueno!”? |
| Alan: Cool wow! So many opportunities to “¡qué bueno!” but for example, say you and I want go dancing and you say, jeez, “Alan I don’t think you can go” and then later on, you say “hey, my plans have changed”, I can go dancing and I will say “¡qué bueno!” |
| Lizy: Great Alan. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Alan: Now let’s switch things up and take a look at a bit of grammar. |
| Lizy: Today we are going to pick up where we left off last time with a verb “estar”, “to be.” What did we learn in the last lesson? |
| Alan: Well last lesson, we said “estar” is used for temporary conditions of “being.” We looked at the first, second and third person singular forms in the present tense. “Estoy”, “I am”, “estás” “you are” and “está”, “he or she is”, “you are” or “it is.” |
| Lizy: And today? |
| Alan: Well today we are going to look at the pleural forms of the verb “estar”. Let’s go back to where this came up in the conversation. Lizy, refresh our memory. |
| Lizy: “¿Cómo están Claudia y tú?” |
| Alan: “How are you and Claudia?” Now there are a couple of things here to pay attention to. First, notice how the plural form of the third person is used, “están”. |
| Lizy: This can mean “they”, “the boys”. “They”, “the boys and the girls” or “you” all in the formal way “ustedes”. |
| Alan: But… |
| Lizy: But what! |
| Alan: But then we see “Claudia y tú”, “you and Claudia”, which tells us that the speakers are informal. Lizy, would you tell us why? |
| Lizy: Sure, Alan. In Latin America, when people are talking to more than one person formally or informally, we use “ustedes”, “you all”, but in Spain this form is reserved for addressing multiple people formally. |
| Alan: Right. As we continue to study the conjugations, we will show how this applies in other context. Now there is another way to use “están” Lizy, how about an example? |
| Lizy: “Ellos también están bien.” |
| Alan: “They too are well.” So this time, we can see that “están” is referring to “ellos” which means “they.” This example comes from the conversation José asks how “Cristina y Javier” are. It is the personal pronoun “ellos”, “they”, which tells us that the subject is now “Cristina y Javier”. The last point today is on the word “estamos”. Lizy, one last example please. |
| Lizy: “Nosotros estamos bien”. |
| Alan: “We are well.” So the verb “estar” changes to “estamos” when we are talking about “nosotros”, which means “we”. So Lizy, do you ever hear the form “estáis” in Latin America? Again this is the form that corresponds to the personal pronoun “vosotros” or “you all” in the informal sense. |
| Lizy: Well Latin Americans don’t use this form. If its heard in Latin America, it’s because Europeans use it here. In writing however this form is used in Academic and other formal texts. As we have said, the “ustedes” this form is used in Latin America for both formal and informal situations. |
| Alan: Right. I mean it’s not like we wouldn’t understand this in Peru for example but it would kind of stand out. |
| Lizy: Yeah. |
| Alan: However in this course, we will definitely be focusing on all of our forms since it’s our goal to expose you to as many forms of Spanish as we can. |
Outro |
| Lizy: Muy bien, Alan. That’s all the time we have for today. “Till next lesson”. “Hasta la próxima lección”. |
| Alan: Well said, Lizy. I can’t add anything to that, chao people. |
| Lizy: ¡Chao! |
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