Learn about using reflexive verbs
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Lizy: Buenos días, soy Lizy. |
| Alan: Hi everybody, Alan here. “Bubble, bubble stomach trouble, 1.” |
| Lizy: Hi, here we are again. It’s winter time here but it becomes hot and fun when we begin a new lesson for you. |
| Alan: Hi everybody, Alan here keeping things hot with Lizy. |
| Lizy: What’s up world? |
| Alan: We are back for another edition of the newbie series broadcasting on demand from Lima, Perú. |
| Lizy: Hold on to your hats. |
| Alan: You are in the world of spanishpod101.com |
| Lizy: Alan, let’s get things moving with a quick recap of what we did last time. |
| Alan: You got it, amiga Lizy. In newbie lesson 31, we were all touched deeply by Ernesto’s heartfelt pledge to Eliana. |
| Lizy: Right. There he said “Para tí, amor, hago cualquier cosa”. |
| Alan: Exactly and that led us to discuss the preposition “para”. Now today, we are moving on to a new situation. Here we have Gabriel and Lucía. Gabriel has had the unfortunate luck within something that just want to grew with his stomach, bubble, bubble, bubble…. |
| Lizy: That’s worst. |
| Alan: I know. We are talking about a potentially very uncomfortable bout here, folks. You know what I mean and unfortunately it tends to happen to foreigners who come to place like Perú and are not careful what they eat. |
| Lizy: Parece entonces que esta lección será una especie de botiquín. |
| Alan: That’s right. This will be spanishpod101 first aid. Now there is also a grammar element. Today, how to use the reflexive verb “sentirse” in order to say “me siento bien”, “I feel good” and also “no me siento bien”, “I don’t feel good” or “I don’t feel so hot.” |
| Lizy: Me parece muy útil. |
| Alan: Más útil no puede ser. Supón que estás en otro páis y te pones mal del estómago, ¿qué haces? Think about it. You are in another country and all of a sudden, your stomach is off, what do you do? |
| Lizy: Claro, ¿a dónde vas? |
| Alan: Where do you go? So these are some of the questions that we are going to be thinking about in this lesson and before we move on to today’s lesson conversation guys, keep in mind that these podcasts are only a part of what it takes to learn Spanish. You’ve also got to apply what you learned no matter what your level. So much of learning Spanish occurs when you are speaking and writing it. |
| Lizy: All right. Time for the conversation. |
| Alan: So don’t forget to click the center button of your iPod and see today’s lesson transcript in the display. |
| Lizy: Escuchemos. |
| DIALOGUE |
| GABRIEL: No me siento bien, Lucía. |
| LUCÍA: ¿Qué tienes? |
| GABRIEL: Me duele el estómago. |
| LUCÍA: ¿Qué has comido? |
| GABRIEL: Nada fuera de lo normal. Espero que no sea una enfermedad grave. |
| LUCÍA: ¡Olvídate! ¿Te preparo una manzanilla? |
| GABRIEL: I don't feel so good, Lucía. |
| LUCÍA: What's wrong? |
| GABRIEL: My stomach hurts. |
| LUCÍA: What've you eaten? |
| GABRIEL: Nothing outside the ordinary. I hope it's not a serious illness. |
| LUCÍA: Forget about it! Can I make some chamomile tea for ya'? |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Alan: Bubble, bubble stomach trouble. |
| Lizy: Looks like Gabriel might have gotten into some kind of bug. |
| Alan: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting to hear how the food has its own bacteria just like any food but a lot of times foreigners just aren’t used to it and it can really wreak havoc on your digestive system. |
| Lizy: Siempre nos da mucha pena cuando vemos a un turista con esa cara de “¿qué caracho he comido para sentirme tan mal?” |
| Alan: Exactly. “What the heck have I eaten to feel this bad?”, but you know eventually you will get accustomed to different foods in different places. Hey, I am the living proof. |
| Lizy: The good thing is that there are also lots of ways to treat an upset stomach. |
| Alan: Right, like manzanilla which Lucía offers Gabriel. |
| Lizy: You got it. Now Alan, how about some vocab? |
| Alan: Yes, boss. First we have... |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Lizy: “Sentirse”. |
| Alan: “To feel.” |
| Lizy: “Sen-tir-se”, “sentirse”. |
| Alan: Next we will look at... |
| Lizy: “Dolerse”. |
| Alan: “To hurt.” |
| Lizy: “Do-ler-se”, “dolerse”. |
| Alan: Now we have... |
| Lizy: “Estómago”. |
| Alan: “Stomach.” |
| Lizy: “Es-tó-ma-go”, “estómago”. |
| Alan: And then... |
| Lizy: “Enfermedad”. |
| Alan: “Sickness”, “illness.” |
| Lizy: “En-fer-me-dad”, “enfermedad”. |
| Alan: Now we will hear... |
| Lizy: “Grave”. |
| Alan: “Serious.” |
| Lizy: “Gra-ve”, “grave”. |
| Alan: And finally... |
| Lizy: “Manzanilla”. |
| Alan: “Chamomile.” |
| Lizy: “Man-za-ni-lla”, “manzanilla”. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Alan: Always great to hear that Lizy, thanks. Now before we get right into the usage of these words, let’s focus our attention “de breve” on the word “enfermedad”. |
| Lizy: “La enfermedad”. |
| Alan: “Una enfermedad”. So here, we’ve got a singular feminine noun and what we see here it’s this “dad” ending, “dad”, “enfermedad”. |
| Lizy: Just like the word “posibilidad”. |
| Alan: Which means “possibility.” Also there are similar words to these which have a “tad” ending such as “lealtad”, which means “loyalty.” |
| Lizy: And “amistad”, “friendship.” |
| Alan: So when you see a word with this ending, try to figure out the root. So today, with “enfermedad” the root is “enferm-” which makes us think of “infirmary.” |
| Lizy: And from here... |
| Alan: From here, we can figure out the formation of the adjective “enfermo”, “sick”, and then understand the word “enfermedad” as “sickness” or “illness.” |
| Lizy: Muy bien. |
| Alan: All right. Now let’s see what some of these words mean by looking at where they came up in today’s conversation. |
| Lizy: You got it. |
| Alan: So first, “sentirse”. |
| Lizy: “Sentirse”. |
| Alan: And Lizy, where may I ask was this used in today’s conversation? |
| Lizy: Gabriel says, “No me siento bien”. ¡Ay, pobrecito! Sí, es que es bien feo tener burbujas en el estómago. |
| Alan: You are right there. I’ve been there. All right, let’s move closer in on the way this verb is used here “me siento” towards. First word, Lizy. |
| Lizy: “Me”. |
| Alan: Here we’ve got personal pronoun, a personal what?, don’t worry. This just means “me” but what’s interesting about this is how it’s related to the verb “siento”. |
| Lizy: Right, because that means “I feel.” |
| Alan: So translate this literally, you’ve got “I feel me.” Now “I feel me.” You wouldn’t really use that in English but we can get the same concept in the present perfect. For example, “I feel myself getting sick.” |
| Lizy: Well said, Alan. |
| Alan: But there are certain verbs in Spanish that can take the action and direct it back on the subject. |
| Lizy: So in that case, how would we translate “me siento”? |
| Alan: Well, definitely not “I feel me” or “I feel myself.” Actually we’d just say “I feel.” So in our example, “no me siento bien”, we get “I don’t feel well” or “I don’t feel so hot.” |
| Lizy: So, is this the same for the verb “doler”? I mean, in the conversation Gabriel says “Me duele el estómago”. |
| Alan: Well, that’s a little different. |
| Lizy: How so? |
| Alan: Well hey, answer me this. What’s the person and number of the verb “siento” as in “no me siento bien”? |
| Lizy: It’s the first person singular. |
| Alan: That’s right, “I feel.” Now what’s the “persona” and “número”, the person and number, of the pronoun “me”? |
| Lizy: It’s also the first person singular. |
| Alan: Aha, now what about this verb “duele”? |
| Lizy: This one is in the third person singular. |
| Alan: Okay, but the pronoun is still “me”, right? I mean the pronoun is still in the first person singular. |
| Lizy: Correcto. |
| Alan: So in the example “Me duele el estómago”, what’s the subject of the verb “duele”? |
| Lizy: “El estómago”. |
| Alan: Aha and is the action of the verb being reflected back on to the subject? |
| Lizy: Not here. |
| Alan: Right. Literally, we would say “my stomach hurts me” even, though in English we tend to translate this as simply, “my stomach hurts.” |
| Lizy: That brings us to the word “estómago”. |
| Alan: Hey, that’s a really easy one to learn. Just listen to it, “estómago”. What do you think it means? |
| Lizy: It’s definitely a cognate. |
| Alan: Aha, you are right. This means “stomach”, “estómago”, “stomach.” Hey guys, this is how you need to train yourself to start thinking. There are so many cognates in Spanish and English that it’s one of the fastest ways to build vocabulary. Remember, it’s not all about memorizing, it’s also about figuring out similarities and just taking chances. |
| Lizy: You’ve got to take chances. |
| Alan: That’s right, Lizy. Now this word “estómago” is probably the most precise way to refer to the stomach but it’s also kind of heavy in its anatomical connotations. So what are some other more colloquial ways to refer to the stomach? |
| Lizy: ¡Ay, sí! Cuando una está gorda dice “¡qué barriga! ¡qué panza!”. Y “barriguita” se dice a menudo cuando vemos a una amiga embarazada. |
| Alan: Hey, I like that. So “barriga” which is really like “stomach” or “panza” which is more like gut or “barriguita”. Now that’s the diminutive, “barriguita”, like a small stomach and often that’s applied to a pregnant woman’s stomach “tiene una barriguita”. It’s like a verbal liposuctions taking something big and it’s making it small. |
| Lizy: This brings us to the last vocab word of the day. |
| Alan: “Manzanilla”. |
| Lizy: “La manzanilla”. |
| Alan: Another singular feminine noun. This, my friends, is simply called “Chamomile.” Lizy, why would Lucía offer Gabriel “una manzanilla”? |
| Lizy: Because it helps to settle the stomach. |
| Alan: Exactly, and what we call these kinds of infusions in Spanish? |
| Lizy: “Digestivos”. |
| Alan: Right, “digestives.” Lizy, ¿te gusta la manzanilla o prefieres otro digestivo?” “Lizy, do you like Chamomile or do you prefer something else?” |
| Lizy: ¿Realmente? Prefiero el anís y la hierbabuena, es buenísima. |
| Alan: Hey, that sounds good, Liz. Hey guys, by the way, when you come to a place like Perú, you can’t use the word “tea” the same way you do back home and you say “herbal tea.” You can’t ask for “un té herbal”. People will look at you kind of funny. It really has to be “un digestivo”. If you say “tea”, that means the kind of tea that has caffeine in it. |
| Lizy: Ahora pues, enfoquémonos en la gramática usada en la conversación de hoy. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Alan: Sounds great, Liz. Time for a bit of grammar, the reflexive verb. Now guys, before we start, just let me say this. This is one topic that you are not going to just touch on once and understand through and through. It’s tough, this one takes time but that’s one of the great things about these podcasts. You can break these topics up into little pieces so you can learn step by step moving forward at your pace. |
| Lizy: So we can see a case of a reflexive verb in the conversation where Gabriel says “No me siento bien”. |
| Alan: Right and we talked about this briefly just now in the vocabulary but here “vamos a profundizar el tema un poco más”. “We are going to go on to greater depth on this.” |
| Lizy: Let’s start with the formation. |
| Alan: Right on. So Lizy, what is the stem of “sentir”? |
| Lizy: In the infinitive it’s “sent-”, “s-e-n-t”. |
| Alan: Right “s-e-n-t”. Now what about the stem when it’s in the present tense of the indicative mood? |
| Lizy: That would be “sient-”, “s-i-e-n-t”. |
| Alan: So here the “E” of the stem has changed to an “ie”, “siento”. We’ve seen this before in this tense and mood. It happens everywhere except for the first and second person plural. |
| Lizy: And what about the other word that we need for this to be reflexive? |
| Alan: Good question. That would be a reflexive pronoun and these are simply “me”, “te”, “se”, “nos”, “os” y ”se”. |
| Lizy: “Me”, “te”, “se”, “nos”, “os” y “se”. |
| Alan: So when we conjugate the verb “sentir” in the present tense of the indicative mood, we need to include one of these words before the verb in order for it to make sense. |
| Lizy: And how do we know which pronoun to use? |
| Alan: Well, that’s the easiest part. We know just by looking at the personal ending of the verb. The pronoun needs to agree with the verb in person and number here. |
| Lizy: I see. So like “me siento”. |
| Alan: Right, “I feel.” |
| Lizy: And “te sientes”. |
| Alan: “You feel.” |
| Lizy: Then “él se siente”. |
| Alan: “He feels.” |
| Lizy: “Ella se siente”. |
| Alan: “She feels.” |
| Lizy: “Nos sentimos”. |
| Alan: “We feel.” |
| Lizy: “Os sentís”. |
| Alan: “You all feel.” |
| Lizy: “Ellos/ellas se sienten”. |
| Alan: “They feel.” Either masculine or feminine. Now we’ve got to remember that including the reflexive pronoun is not just a matter of taste. |
| Lizy: No, no, no. |
| Alan: If we omit it, the meaning of the verb changes. This is a pitfall guys. So watch out. When we use the verb “sentir” without the reflexive pronoun, it means “to feel” in the sense of “to think.” |
| Lizy: Claro, por ejemplo se puede decir “siento que va a llover”. |
| Alan: Right and that’s like ”I feel like it’s going to rain” which is really just another way of saying “I think it’s going to rain.” |
Outro |
| Lizy: Well, this is where we will stop for today. |
| Alan: Great lesson, Liz. I know some days you don’t feel like you are learning a thing, but trust me, you are. Its little steps. |
| Lizy: ¡Chao! |
| Alan: Take care. ¡Chao! |
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