Learn about talking about what has happened
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Lizy: Buen día, soy Lizy. |
| Alan: Alan here. “Bubble Bubble, Stomach Trouble, 2.” |
| Lizy: ¡Hola amigos en todo el mundo! |
| Alan: So last time in part 1 of this lesson, bubble bubble, stomach trouble, we met Gabriel who is suffering an upset stomach and looking for solace in his dear friend Lucía. |
| Lizy: Getting sick in another country is so uncomfortable. |
| Alan: Uh I know, I mean just think about how bad it is when you get sick at home and now try to imagine what it’s like when you are in a different healthcare system, you don’t know where to go and you don’t know what you have and even though, it’s only stomach trouble, sometimes if it’s bad, it feels pretty close to death. Wouldn’t you agree, Liz? |
| Lizy: Así es, te sientes fatal. Es muy pero muy incómodo. Me pasa a veces, sobre todo cuando estoy tensa. |
| Alan: You are right, Lizy, and for all those reasons, it’s a great topic to study. I mean we hope that none of you get sick when you travel to a Spanish speaking country but in the event that you do, hopefully this lesson will make it a little easier on you. |
| Lizy: So what are we looking at for grammar today? |
| Alan: We’ve got a great topic. We are going to learn how to express that an action has happened. |
| Lizy: ¿Como por ejemplo? |
| Alan: Como por ejemplo, “el clima ha mejorado bastante”. “The weather has improved a great deal.” |
| Lizy: Ah, ya veo. It should be good. |
| Alan: And now aside from this, we are going to talk a bit about what it’s like to have to go to the pharmacy. What you will need, what you can get and again as Lizy said last time, this lesson is kind of a first aid kit via podcast. |
| Lizy: So before we jump in, remember to look for Peruvian, Iberian and Costa Rican regional lessons that reference this lesson. |
| Alan: Every form of Spanish is a regional form. So don’t get pigeonholed into a single form when you can have the whole Spanish speaking world delivered to you on demand. |
| Lizy: All right, shall we? |
| Alan: Let’s! |
| Lizy: Now is the time to click the center button on your iPods to see the lesson transcript in your display. |
| Alan: Let’s listen closely to the following conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| LUCÍA: Gabriel, ¿cómo vas con la molestia? |
| GABRIEL: La verdad es que no ha mejorado y me siento peor. |
| LUCÍA: ¿En serio? ¡Ay, pobrecito! Tienes que ir a la farmacia. |
| GABRIEL: ¿Sabes dónde queda la farmacia más cercana? |
| LUCÍA: Sí, sé. ¿Te acompaño? |
| GABRIEL: Ah, gracias, Lucía, mejor. |
| LUCÍA: Gabriel, how are you doing with your discomfort? |
| GABRIEL: The truth is that it hasn't gotten better and I feel worse. |
| LUCÍA: Seriously? Oh, you poor little thing! You've got to go the pharmacy. |
| GABRIEL: Do you know where the nearest pharmacy is? |
| LUCÍA: Yeah, I do. Should I go with you? |
| GABRIEL: Oh, Lucía, thanks, that would be better. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Lizy: It’s wild to think about how many pharmacists there must be in a city like Lima. |
| Alan: Yeah, I know. It seems that you can find them on every corner. It’s funny though, Lizy. You know, there just never seems to be one around when you really need one. |
| Lizy: Are there pharmacies like these in major Canadian cities? |
| Alan: There are some similarities but there is also some differences. For example, here in Peru I’ve noticed that some pharmacies will even have a doctor on staff. So you go in, you tell him or her what your condition is and he or she will prescribe you some bills, the medication. Now of course, that’s not always good because it’s a doctor who works in a pharmacy. So they have a vested interest to prescribe you drugs and that’s not always good. |
| Lizy: Eso es cierto, Alan. Pero también hay buenas farmacias. That’s true. Also there are good pharmacies but you really have to know where to go. |
| Alan: 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. |
| Alan: So let’s begin with... |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Lizy: “Molestia”. |
| Alan: “Bother”, “pain”, “discomfort.” |
| Lizy: “Mo-les-tia”, “molestia”. |
| Alan: Next we will look at... |
| Lizy: “Mejorado”. |
| Alan: “Improved.” |
| Lizy: “Me-jo-ra-do”, “mejorado”. |
| Alan: Now we have... |
| Lizy: “Pobrecito, pobrecita”. |
| Alan: “Poor little thing.” |
| Lizy: “Po-bre-ci-to, po-bre-ci-ta”, “pobrecito, pobrecita”. |
| Alan: And then... |
| Lizy: “Quedar”. |
| Alan: “To be located.” |
| Lizy: “Que-dar”, “quedar”. |
| Alan: Next we will look at... |
| Lizy: “Farmacia”. |
| Alan: “Pharmacy”, “drugstore.” |
| Lizy: “Far-ma-cia”, “farmacia”. |
| Alan: And finally... |
| Lizy: “Cercano, cercana”. |
| Alan: “Near.” |
| Lizy: “Cer-ca-no, cer-ca-na”, “cercano, cercana”. |
| Alan: Okay guys, real quick. The pronunciation of the word “farmacia”. |
| Lizy: “Farmacia”. |
| Alan: Right, “farmacia”. Spelled “f-a-r-m-a-c-i-a”. |
| Lizy: “Farmacia”. |
| Alan: Now Lizy, there is no written accent on this word but where does the stress fall? |
| Lizy: On the second letter “A”, “farmacia”. |
| Alan: Exactly not “farmacia” no, no, no, no it’s “farmacia”. |
| Lizy: “Farmacia”. |
| Alan: Great. So now let’s dig deeper into today’s vocabulary considering its context. So first word, “molestia”. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Lizy: Lucía asks Gabriel, “Gabriel, ¿cómo vas con la molestia?” |
| Alan: So we know that these first two words “¿cómo vas?” simply mean “how are you doing?” or “how are you getting on?” but then we have “con la molestia”. |
| Lizy: Three words. |
| Alan: First word... |
| Lizy: “Con”. |
| Alan: A preposition meaning “with”, and then... |
| Lizy: “La”. |
| Alan: And this is... |
| Lizy: A definite article. |
| Alan: Its gender and number. |
| Lizy: It’s feminine and singular. |
| Alan: So that means that the noun “molestia” must also be feminine and singular since these two words need to agree with each other in number and gender, right? |
| Lizy: Sí, maestro. |
| Alan: Haha, and while we have seen this word “molestia” is used before to mean “inconvenience”, today we see it when it refers to “discomfort.” So the question “¿cómo vas con la molestia?” means “how are you doing with the discomfort?” |
| Lizy: Moving right along, our next word is “mejorado”. |
| Alan: Looks an awful lot like the verb “mejorar”. |
| Lizy: With good reason. |
| Alan: Now why is that? |
| Lizy: Because it’s the past participle of “mejorar”. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Alan: Okay and this verb “mejorar” in the infinitive means “to improve” but as a past participle it means “improved” and we will see in today’s grammar section, we can use the past participle like this after the verb “haber” conjugated in the present tense to talk about actions that have happened. |
| Lizy: “Mejorar”, “to improve” and “mejorado”, “improved.” |
| Alan: Next up the verb “quedar”. Again not a new word in itself but this usage is pretty interesting. Lizy, how did this come up in today’s conversation? |
| Lizy: Gabriel asks Lucía, “¿Sabes dónde queda la farmacia más cercana?” |
| Alan: And that means, “do you know where the nearest pharmacy is?” but let’s shorten it up to focus even closer on the verb “quedar”. Let’s say, “¿dónde queda la farmacia?” So Lizy, what’s the subject here? |
| Lizy: That would be “farmacia”. |
| Alan: Now notice how it’s the last word of the sentence here and what action is the subject carrying out? |
| Lizy: La acción de “quedar”. |
| Alan: Right. So as a statement, “la farmacia queda”, and as a question, “¿dónde queda la farmacia?” Now, we’ve seen other expressions with the verb “quedar” in which it meant either “to remain” or “to stay.” |
| Lizy: Claro, por ejemplo, “queda poco tiempo”, “there is not much time left” or “me quedé donde mi hermana”, “I stayed over at my sister’s.” |
| Alan: Right but here the verb “quedar” means “to be located” and we often just end up translating this with the verb “to be.” |
| Lizy: Uh, so “¿Sabes dónde queda la farmacia más cercana?” |
| Alan: “Do you know where the nearest pharmacy is?” |
| Lizy: And this brings us to the last word of the day, “farmacia”. |
| Alan: Right, we focused on the pronunciation of this a little earlier. So this word simply means “pharmacy” or “drugstore” as they say in the States. |
| Lizy: As we were saying before, you can find “farmacias” all over the place in major Latin American cities. |
| Alan: Yeah and you know another thing that’s kind of interesting, Lizy? Is that you don’t have to commit to buying a large quantity of anything. They will sell you many drugs in the quantities that you desire. For example, give me one aspirin. I mean come on, that’s service for you. |
| Lizy: All right, now how about some grammar? |
| Alan: Yes ma’am. Today we’ve got a great topic. If you’ve been listening to our beginner series or the lower intermediate series with Kathy and Anna, you’ve probably heard us talking about the preterit tense and how it’s used to express actions in the past. Well, today we are going to learn an easier way to express past actions. |
| Lizy: Another one of Alan’s secrets. |
| Alan: I don’t know about that but this folks is a really easy way to explain that an action has happened. |
| Lizy: Well Mr. Let’s have it! |
| Alan: All right, so back in today’s lesson conversation. Gabriel still not feeling well tells the concerned Lucía that his discomfort “no ha mejorado”. So this is the construction that we are going to be focusing on. |
| Lizy: “No ha mejorado”. |
| Alan: So Lizy, what’s the verb here? |
| Lizy: It’s just “ha”, “h-a”. |
| Alan: And could you tell us what this one is in the infinitive form since that’s an easier way to remember what kind of verb it is? |
| Lizy: It’s “haber”. |
| Alan: Right and we recall that “haber” can be used in combination with other verbs and when this is so, we can call it either an auxiliary verb or a helping verb. |
| Lizy: Because it helps to complete the meaning of the main verb. |
| Alan: Yeah, so we’ve studied the verb “haber” in previous lessons. Lizy, could you conjugate it for us to refresh our memories? |
| Lizy: Sure “he”, “has”, “ha”, “hemos”, “habéis”, “han”. |
| Alan: “He”, “has”, “ha”, “hemos”, “habéis”, “han”. “I have”, “you have”, “he has”, “we have”, “you all have”, “they have.” Now what about this word “mejorado”. It looks like a verb, but is it really? |
| Lizy: Well, like we said, it’s a past participle. |
| Alan: And to which conjugations does the verb “mejorar” belong? |
| Lizy: It’s an “ar” verb. |
| Alan: That’s right and how has this past participle been formed then? |
| Lizy: Well, just the “R” at the end has been replaced by the letters “d” and “o” from “mejorar” to “mejorado”. |
| Alan: So now here is the thing guys. This is the case for all regular verbs of the first conjugation from “hablar”, “to speak”, we get “hablado”, “spoken.” |
| Lizy: From “llamar”, “to call”, we have “llamado”, “called.” |
| Alan: So all we need to do is to use a form of the verb “haber” conjugated in the present tense of the indicative mood and then add a past participle after it and we have to express what has happened, “ha mejorado”, “it has improved” or “no ha mejorado”, “it hasn’t improved.” |
| Lizy: “No he hablado con Miguel”. “I haven’t spoken with Miguel.” |
| Alan: “Hemos estudiado mucho en esta lección”. “We’ve studied a lot in this lesson.” |
| Lizy: Is that a hint or another example? |
| Alan: Well, it’s kind of both. |
Outro |
| Lizy: That’s all for today. |
| Alan: Hey guys, thanks so much for listening. |
| Lizy: Chicos, chicas, señoras, señores, nos encantó estar una vez más con ustedes. Boys, girls, ladies and gentlemen, it was a real pleasure to be with you once again. Till next lesson, ¡hasta la próxima lección! |
| Alan: Well said Lizy, chao people! |
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