Learn about using the verb “oir” (to hear)
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Alan: “Listen, there is a public concert.” |
| Lizy: Hello everyone. This lesson is a special one because we have a new host to welcome on to our show. Let’s give a warm welcome to Alan La Rue, ¿cómo estás, Alan? |
| Alan: Muy bien Lizy, ¡gracias! It’s great to be here. |
| Lizy: Alan is going to be with us for some newbie and beginner lessons. Today of course, we have a newbie lesson. |
| Alan: Yeah, I am really excited to be on the show and I hope that I can help clear some things out for our students. |
| Lizy: Oh, I am sure you are going to be a big help. |
| Alan: Muy amable, Lizy. |
| Lizy: So Alan, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself? |
| Alan: Okay. |
| Lizy: For example, what do you do? |
| Alan: Well, I found out the EL SOL Spanish Language School six years ago and I’ve been living in Perú since 1995. |
| Lizy: Oh, it’s very interesting and do you like Peru? |
| Alan: I love Peru. |
| Lizy: Okay and how did you come to learn Spanish? |
| Alan: Well, before moving to Perú in 1995, I studied some Spanish at the University and when I moved here, well I developed a program for myself and I just looked for all kinds of opportunities to practice. |
| Lizy: Okay. And if there was one piece of advice about learning Spanish that you could give our students what would it be? |
| Alan: Well, don’t be afraid to commit mistakes. The more chances you take, the more opportunities you look for to speak Spanish, the more opportunity you will have to learn. Also I think it’s very important to develop a system, a system that’s right for you, mix different things together but practice and have some kind of formula to keep working on day after day. |
| Lizy: Oh, I see you are a good professor. Well, Alan, this is really exciting. I think this is going to be a great, great show. |
| Alan: And what are we going to talk about today? |
| Lizy: Well, today’s lesson conversation takes place in “la ciudad de Panamá”. |
| Alan: Ah, “in Panama City.” |
| Lizy: Right, here Jorge and Otilia stumble upon a public concert. |
| Alan: Sounds like fun. And is there a grammar topic that we are going to focus on in particular? |
| Lizy: Yeah, I’d like to talk about how to express that you want someone to do something without saying “I want.” |
| Alan: Umm that sounds interesting. Okay so then, why don’t we get into today’s conversation? |
| DIALOGUE |
| JORGE: ¡Escucha, Otilia! Hay música. |
| OTILIA: ¡Oye! Tienes razón. |
| JORGE: Es un concierto público. |
| OTILIA: Me gusta la música. |
| Alan: And now slower. Una vez más esta vez lentamente. |
| JORGE: ¡Escucha, Otilia! Hay música. |
| OTILIA: ¡Oye! Tienes razón. |
| JORGE: Es un concierto público. |
| OTILIA: Me gusta la música. |
| Alan: And now with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| JORGE: ¡Escucha, Otilia! Hay música. |
| JORGE: Otilia, listen! There's music. |
| OTILIA: ¡Oye! Tienes razón. |
| OTILIA: Hey, you're right. |
| JORGE: Es un concierto público. |
| JORGE: It's a public concert. |
| OTILIA: Me gusta la música. |
| OTILIA: I like the music. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Alan: Are you big music fan, Lizy? |
| Lizy: “¡Me encanta!” “I love it!” |
| Alan: I do too. So what kind of music do you like? |
| Lizy: Oh, I have eclectic tastes, Alan. I like Reggaeton, Latin pop, Rock, Gospel. Well… |
| Alan: Well, that is eclectic. I notice mostly music they can dance too. |
| Lizy: And what kind of music do you like? |
| Alan: Ah, pretty much the same. I like a bit of everything but I love Latin Music. I saw such an interesting show a couple of weeks ago. |
| Lizy: What was it? |
| Alan: “La danza de las tijeras”. |
| Lizy: Wow! Now Alan, many of our students probably don’t know what this is and I think they get a kick out of it. |
| Alan: With no doubt, it’s fantastic. “La danza de las tijeras” is the Peruvian scissor dance. Basically it’s a highland dance from the Huancavelica region. It comes from the time when people would shear the “Lamas” and shear the “Alpacas”. So they take the scissors that are split in two and the dancers bang those together ching, ching….meanwhile they are dancing around in a very acrobat form doing flips back and forth. It’s incredibly dangerous, incredibly beautiful and it really takes an athlete to do it. It’s a fantastic dance. |
| Lizy: What can I say? In Perú, we have an incredible variety of dancers. |
| Alan: What a great show! |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Lizy: All right. Now let’s take a look at some of the vocabulary and phrases that we saw in today’s conversation. |
| Alan: Okay so first we have... |
| Lizy: “Escuchar”. |
| Alan: “To listen.” |
| Lizy: “Es-cu-char”, “escuchar”. |
| Alan: Next we will look at... |
| Lizy: “Música”. |
| Alan: “Music.” |
| Lizy: “Mú-si-ca”, “música”. |
| Alan: Now we have... |
| Lizy: “¡oye!” |
| Alan: “Hey!” |
| Lizy: “¡o-ye!”, “¡oye!” |
| Alan: And then we have... |
| Lizy: “Razón”. |
| Alan: “Reason.” |
| Lizy: “Ra-zón”, “razón”. |
| Alan: Next... |
| Lizy: “Concierto”. |
| Alan: “Concert.” |
| Lizy: “Con-cier-to”, “concierto”. |
| Alan: And finally... |
| Lizy: “Público, pública”. |
| Alan: “Public”, “audience.” |
| Lizy: “Pú-bli-co, pú-bli-ca”, “público, pública”. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Alan: Lizy, a quick question. |
| Lizy: Sure, Alan. |
| Alan: How do you say “ear” in Spanish? |
| Lizy: It’s “oído”. |
| Alan: Right, “oído”. And what about to say “to hear”, how is that expressed? |
| Lizy: We say “oír”. |
| Alan: “Oír”. Okay, and does the noun “oído” come from the verb “oír”? |
| Lizy: It does. |
| Alan: And in this list, we just saw the expression “¡oye!” and we said it means “hey!”, right? |
| Lizy: Right. |
| Alan: So when we say “¡oye!” it’s kind of like saying “hear me out.” |
| Lizy: Kind of. I would say it’s more like “listen.” |
| Alan: Now that we’ve looked at some of these words on their own, what do you say we put some of them in context and look at their usage? |
| Lizy: All right. |
| Alan: So this word “escuchar” it has a couple of interesting meanings. You want to start with that? |
| Lizy: Sure. |
| Alan: Lizy, if I say the verb “to listen” like this and say “hey, listen you can’t do that.” Does it sound like I am really asking you to listen to me or is it more like me saying “pay attention to what I am about to say.” |
| Lizy: It’s more like saying pay attention, I think. |
| Alan: And we can also say “escucho el mar”, “I listen to the sea”, right? |
| Lizy: Yeah, that sounds fine. |
| Alan: But here we are really referring to the act of listening and not to paying attention right? |
| Lizy: Yeah, here we are talking about listen. |
| Alan: So depending on its usage, the verb “escuchar” can mean “to listen” or “to pay attention.” |
| Lizy: Nice distinction. So, Alan, “escucha”, pay attention. |
| Alan: Escucho. |
| Lizy: What do you call one of those plays or movies where all of the actor’s lines are sung instead of just recited? |
| Alan: Oh, it’s called a musical. |
| Lizy: And if I get rid of that last letter the “L”, then what do you have? |
| Alan: Then I have “musica”. |
| Lizy: And if you pronounce that word as we would say it in Spanish, then what would it be? |
| Alan: It would be “música”. |
| Lizy: And in the conversation we heard “me gusta la música” |
| Alan: Right and “me gusta la música” means “I like the music” or “the music is pleasing to me.” |
| Lizy: So in order to say “music”, we say “música” in Spanish. |
| Alan: “La música”. |
| Lizy: Right. It’s a feminine noun, “la música”. “Me gusta la música”, “I like the music.” |
| Alan: And Lizy, another question. |
| Lizy: Okay. |
| Alan: If I have a reason to do something, does that mean that if I do it, I am right in doing it? |
| Lizy: As long as it’s a good reason. |
| Alan: Well okay, let’s also suppose that it’s a good reason. |
| Lizy: Supongamos. |
| Alan: So if I have a good reason to do something, it’s right for me to do it? |
| Lizy: It would seem so. |
| Alan: So we can say “to have reason”? |
| Lizy: Yeah. |
| Alan: And how do you say “to have” in Spanish? |
| Lizy: We say “tener”. |
| Alan: “Tener”, “to have”, right. And how do you say “reason”? |
| Lizy: It’s just “razón”. |
| Alan: Exactly, “razón”. So in Spanish, can we say “to have reason”? |
| Lizy: “Tener razón”. Sure. |
| Alan: And does it mean “to have reason”? |
| Lizy: In the sense to “being right.” |
| Alan: So if I say “¡tienes razón!”, what does this mean? |
| Lizy: It means “you are right.” |
| Alan: Interesting. |
| Lizy: All right, let’s look at one more word. |
| Alan: Sure. Which one? |
| Lizy: Well, if something is not private, then it’s… |
| Alan: “Public.” |
| Lizy: Right. And something that’s public belongs to a group of people, right? |
| Alan: Safe to say. |
| Lizy: And if we were to add an “o” to the end, what might this sound like in English? |
| Alan: “Publico”. |
| Lizy: And what about if it were pronounced in Spanish? |
| Alan: It would be “público”. |
| Lizy: And isn’t audience a group of people? |
| Alan: Definitely. |
| Lizy: And if I say “es un concierto público”, “it’s a public concert”, does “público” refer to a group of people or to something that belongs to the group? |
| Alan: Something that belongs to the group. It’s a public concert. |
| Lizy: And if I say “al público le encanta el espectáculo”, “the audience loves the show”, does the word “público” refer to a group or to something that belongs to the group? |
| Alan: Now it refers to the group itself. |
| Lizy: So can we say that the word “público” means both “public” and “audience”? |
| Alan: It looks like we can. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Alan: So Lizy, what grammar did you guys look at last time? |
| Lizy: We were looking at how to give informal commands in Spanish. |
| Alan: Great topic. Very useful. |
| Lizy: We learned how to say “mira” to get someone to look at something. |
| Alan: Ah the imperative mood, the mood of command. |
| Lizy: Eso. |
| Alan: So we see a few verbs in this mood today, don’t we? |
| Lizy: Yeah. |
| Alan: Remind us which one of them popped up? |
| Lizy: Jorge says, “¡Escucha, Otilia! Hay música.” |
| Alan: Right, “¡Escucha, Otilia! Hay música.” |
| Alan: “¡Escucha, Otilia! Hay música”. “Otilia, listen! There is music.” |
| Lizy: So Alan, what’s the verb here in the imperative mood? |
| Alan: It’s “escucha”. |
| Lizy: What does this verb look like if we find it in the dictionary? |
| Alan: It would be “escuchar” in the infinitive form. |
| Lizy: And when do you say “escucha” as a command, how are you forming this verb? |
| Alan: It’s the same as the third person singular of the present tense. We just moved the “ar” ending from the infinitive and added an “A”. |
| Lizy: Right. So from “escuchar”, “to listen”, we get “escucha”, “listen.” |
| Alan: Now Lizy, in today’s conversation, it seems like Jorge and Olivia are friends. Wouldn’t you say? |
| Lizy: Yeah, it seems that way. |
| Alan: And if they are friends, then they are likely to speak to each other informally, right? |
| Lizy: I’d be surprised if they didn’t. |
| Alan: And the command “escucha” which Jorge gives is an informal command? |
| Lizy: That it is. |
| Alan: And if we were to suppose that Olivia was the mother of Jorge’s friend, he would probably speak to her formally, right? |
| Lizy: Yeah, that would be highly likely. |
| Alan: And if he were speaking to her informally, then would his command be formal or informal? |
| Lizy: It would have to be formal. |
| Alan: And what conjugation does the verb “escuchar” belong to? |
| Lizy: It’s the first conjugation verb. |
| Alan: And how do we make a formal command for a verb in the first conjugation? |
| Lizy: We will remove the ending from the infinitive form and add an “E.” |
| Alan: So from the stem “escuch-” we would add an “E “and get “escuche”. |
| Lizy: Right, and this means “listen” in the formal sense like “listen ma’am.” |
| Alan: Commands are so important to learn in Spanish. |
| Lizy: I agree. As someone who’s learned Spanish to the point of being bilingual, what do you think are some of the most useful commands that new students can learn? |
| Alan: Maybe for example “ven”, “to come”, “come here”, “sube”. I live in an apartment building and when people call on the intercommunicator, I am always having to say to them “sube, sube por favor”. |
| Lizy: Well that’s a good one. |
Outro |
| Alan: Well Lizy, ha sido un gusto. It’s been a pleasure. |
| Lizy: It was really great to have you here for this lesson, Alan. |
| Alan: Hey, it’s great to be here. |
| Lizy: I look forward till next time. |
| Alan: De igual manera, Lizy. Likewise. Take care now. |
| Lizy: Cuídense. |
| Alan: ¡Chao! |
| Lizy: ¡Chao! |
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