Learn all about using the periphrasis to talk about obligations
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Dylan: Hola, hola a todos, habla Dylan. |
| Carlos: What’s going on pod101 world? My name is Carlos. “You Simply Have to Check out What We Are Hiding in This Spanish Lesson.” In this lesson, you will learn about expressing obligations. |
| Dylan: This conversation takes place in a home. |
| Carlos: This conversation is between María and Carla. |
| Dylan: The speakers are strangers. Therefore the speakers will be speaking formally. |
| Carlos: Let’s listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| MARIA: ¡Ya volvimos! |
| CARLA: Hola... ¡qué dicha! |
| MARIA: ¿Qué dicha? ¿Está todo bien? |
| CARLA: Claro... ehhh... por supuesto... |
| MARIA: ¿Y por qué estás tan nerviosa? ¿Dónde están mis angeles? |
| CARLA: Jugando escondidas. |
| MARIA: ¿Y quién busca a quién? |
| CARLA: Yo tenía que buscarlas... están en el closet. |
| And now, slowly. |
| Una vez más, esta vez lentamente. |
| MARIA: ¡Ya volvimos! |
| CARLA: Hola... ¡qué dicha! |
| MARIA: ¿Qué dicha? ¿Está todo bien? |
| CARLA: Claro... ehhh... por supuesto... |
| MARIA: ¿Y por qué estás tan nerviosa? ¿Dónde están mis angeles? |
| CARLA: Jugando escondidas. |
| MARIA: ¿Y quién busca a quién? |
| CARLA: Yo tenía que buscarlas... están en el closet. |
| And now, with the translation. |
| Ahora, incluimos la traducción. |
| MARIA: ¡Ya volvimos! |
| MARIA: We're back! |
| CARLA: Hola... ¡qué dicha! |
| CARLA: Hello there...what luck! |
| MARIA: ¿Qué dicha? ¿Está todo bien? |
| MARIA: What luck? Is everything okay? |
| CARLA: Claro... ehhh... por supuesto... |
| CARLA: Sure...uhhh...of course it is... |
| MARIA: ¿Y por qué estás tan nerviosa? ¿Dónde están mis angeles? |
| MARIA: So then, why are you so nervous? Where are my angels? |
| CARLA: Jugando escondidas. |
| CARLA: Playing hide and seek. |
| MARIA: ¿Y quién busca a quién? |
| MARIA: Who's looking for whom? |
| CARLA: Yo tenía que buscarlas... están en el closet. |
| CARLA: I had to look for them...they're in the closet. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Carlos: Hey Dylan, what kind of game – now you grew up in Latin America, you grew up in Costa Rica, right? |
| Dylan: Right. |
| Carlos: What games did you play when you were a kid? Like when I was a kid, I played hide n' seek and like manhunt and stuff like that when I got a little older and we were too cool to call it hide n' seek. |
| Dylan: Too cool. Well, we played the same thing. We played “Tag” which is called “Quedó” , we played “Escondido” which is “hide n' seek”, we played something about kicking a can which I don’t really remember how to play. |
| Carlos: Kicking a can? |
| Dylan: Yeah. |
| Carlos: I did not remember how to play it, just kick a can. |
| Dylan: There is more to it, there is more to it, Chiqui maybe knows. |
| Carlos: Okay. |
| Dylan: “Pateando la lata”, I don’t remember. Umm yeah that’s basically what we played while there are more advanced games as we got older but now I don’t want to get into that. |
| Carlos: Hit the monkey with the rock! Okay guys, let’s take a closer look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Dylan: “Volver”. |
| Carlos: “To return”, “to come back.” |
| Dylan: “Vol-ver”, “volver”. |
| Dylan: “Nervioso, nerviosa”. |
| Carlos: “Nervous”, “heavy.” |
| Dylan: “Ner-vio-so, ner-vio-sa”, “nervioso, nerviosa”. |
| Dylan: “Escondidas”. |
| Carlos: “Secretly”, “in secret.” |
| Dylan: “Es-con-di-das”, “escondidas”. |
| Dylan: “Buscar”. |
| Carlos: “To look for”, “to search for.” |
| Dylan: “Bus-car”, “buscar”. |
| Dylan: “Por supuesto”. |
| Carlos: “Certainly”, “of course.” |
| Dylan: “Por su-pues-to”, “por supuesto”. |
| Dylan: “¡Qué dicha!” |
| Carlos: “What luck!” |
| Dylan: “¡Qué di-cha!”, “¡qué dicha!” |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Carlos: Okay guys, let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Dylan: The first word we will look at is “volver”. |
| Carlos: “Volver”, I remember that one, “to return”, “to come back” and it looks like we have returned to this word again and my recollection of Penélope Cruz. |
| Dylan: Right. Now I remember. |
| Carlos: But to me, you know, we are not even going to go, we went to another lesson. |
| Dylan: This is strangely familiar. I don’t know which other lesson you already described this on but I do remember it. |
| Carlos: True, true, I have digressed. Any way, “volver” once again, a verb. |
| Dylan: And coincidentally used in the first line of our conversation. |
| Carlos: How? |
| Dylan: “¡Ya volvimos!” |
| Carlos: “We are back!” You know, I knew that was the example I remembered. I just wanted to hear you say it. |
| Dylan: Very stereotypical Spanish. Honey I am home kind of speech. |
| Carlos: You know we’ve mentioned that “volver” is also an irregular verb. |
| Dylan: Right, pesky irregular. Now how do we know? |
| Carlos: Well, let’s listen to one conjugation “Mario siempre vuelve tarde del trabajo”. |
| Dylan: “Mario always returns late from work.” So we see that “volver” has an “O” to “U” stem change. |
| Carlos: Exactly. |
| Dylan: The verb “regresar” I am sure also comes to mind when you are dealing with “volver”. |
| Carlos: You know, now that I think about it, you know I think I use “regresar”, “to return”, a lot more than “volver”. I don’t think I ever use “volver”. |
| Dylan: Looks like someone has some homework to do now. |
| Carlos: I will let you know how it turns out. |
| Dylan: “¡Qué dicha!” |
| Carlos: What? |
| Dylan: “¡Qué dicha!” |
| Carlos: What are we lucky about? |
| Dylan: “¡Qué dicha!”, that our next vocabulary entry is the phrase “¡qué dicha!” |
| Carlos: I hear that all the time. |
| Dylan: What does it mean? |
| Carlos: “What luck!” |
| Dylan: Right and you know that Carla feels lucky when María walks in the door. |
| Carlos: She hasn’t been having a good time with the kids. |
| Dylan: So it is completely understandable when she has a sigh of relief and says... |
| Carlos: “Hola... ¡qué dicha!” |
| Dylan: “Hello there, what luck!” |
| Carlos: You can hear the pressure being taken off. |
| Dylan: This phrase is overwhelmingly positive and can be applied in any exclamation of thanks. |
| Carlos: Right, like “Mi hijo pasó el examen con buena nota. ¡Qué dicha!” |
| Dylan: “My son passed the test with a good grade. What luck!” |
| Carlos: I guess he hadn’t studied. |
| Dylan: Those were always the best grades when you went in completely blank and bam! You get a good grade. |
| Carlos: Did it happen too often? I used to just draw blanks you know especially in Spanish class, but that’s another story. |
| Dylan: I am sure it is. Now a more common use of “dicha” is heard all around Latin America. |
| Carlos: Right. I hear it a lot after “¿cómo estás?” an automatic answer it seems here is “muy bien, por dicha”. |
| Dylan: Well, loosely translated as... |
| Carlos: “Very good for luck.” |
| Dylan: Or if Carla wanted to possibly rephrase what she said... |
| Carlos: She could have easily said “¡qué suerte!” |
| Dylan: Which also means “what luck!”. We know that “suerte” means “luck.” |
| Carlos: “Por supuesto”. |
| Dylan: “Of course.” |
| Carlos: You know while this is our next word, I used to think it was three words in one. |
| Dylan: That’s understandable, Carlos. Phonetically, it sounds like three words, “por supuesto”. |
| Carlos: Right, but it’s only two. |
| Dylan: Correct. The expression in interjection “por supuesto” is only two words. |
| Carlos: Now do you think María believes Carla’s answer “Claro... ehhh... por supuesto…”? |
| Dylan: “Sure, of course it is.” I don’t know. She may have been expecting worse knowing her kids. |
| Carlos: That is quite possible. |
| Dylan: Let’s practice this expression with some sincere answers. |
| Carlos: Okay, shoot! |
| Dylan: ¿Quieres ir al cine? |
| Carlos: Por supuesto. |
| Dylan: ¿Usted es buen estudiante? |
| Carlos: Por supuesto. |
| Dylan: Good. You were convincing there. I believe you. |
| Carlos: Thanks. I’ve always thought of myself as a good actor. |
| Dylan: Claro. |
| Carlos: Sure I was just getting to that as a related word. |
| Dylan: It is the obvious one. |
| Carlos: Why don’t you tell us why? |
| Dylan: Because we have another expression that also means of course which is... |
| Carlos: “Claro que sí”. |
| Dylan: Now don’t get nervous. |
| Carlos: With our loyal audience “¿yo nervioso? ¡jamás!” |
| Dylan: I heard of you being nervous once. |
| Carlos: Right. During that party a long time ago and I was performing for the first time in Costa Rica “estaba nervioso”. |
| Dylan: But it looks like María noticed that something about Carla is not right. |
| Carlos: You can just imagine her tipping her head to the side and saying... |
| Dylan: “¿Y por qué estás tan nerviosa?” |
| Carlos: You still just tip your head. “So then, why are you so nervous?” |
| Dylan: I know why, I know why! |
| Carlos: I won’t be too if I lock these kids in a closet. |
| Dylan: You would never do that. |
| Carlos: With kids like that, I might make an exception. |
| Dylan: ¿Sabes qué? |
| Carlos: ¿Qué? |
| Dylan: “Mi mamá es muy nerviosa. Siempre tiene nervios”. |
| Carlos: “My mother is very nervous. She always has nerves.” Hey you incorporated a related word in there. |
| Dylan: Right. The masculine noun, “nerves.” |
| Carlos: “Nerves”, man I am getting anxiety just thinking about this. |
| Dylan: Relax because now we are coming to vocabulary word that has to do with one of my favorite activities when I was a child. |
| Carlos: And what’s that? |
| Dylan: “Escondidas”. |
| Carlos: Secretly in secret. |
| Dylan: But in this case, what are the children doing? |
| Carlos: Playing a game. |
| Dylan: And what game is that? |
| Carlos: “Jugando escondidas”. |
| Dylan: “Playing hide n’ seek”, yeay! One of my absolute favorites. |
| Carlos: Along with hit the Monkey with the Rock. |
| Dylan: Stop the monkey one. |
| Carlos: I keep forgetting where you grew up. You know, that must have been a while. |
| Dylan: I am telling you, Carlos. There is no better game of hide n’ seek than one played in the rain forest except for one thing. |
| Carlos: What’s that? |
| Dylan: Snakes. Poisonous frogs, bullet ants, you know the stuff you have to watch out for. |
| Carlos: Right. One thing, you must have been a very observant child. |
| Dylan: Well, I didn’t mention, monkeys.... |
| Carlos: Well, they get mad when you hit the rocks at them. |
| Dylan: Well, get stung a couple of times and see enough snakes that can kill you and you mature pretty fast while playing children’s games. |
| Carlos: Do your kids like it too? |
| Dylan: Well, Samba is a bit young yet for hide n’ seek but Tico, a él le encanta jugar a escondidas. |
| Carlos: He loves playing hide n’ seek hah! |
| Dylan: Yep and he just started. So you know that we are in for a couple of more years of this. |
| Carlos: A couple! I was playing manhunt which is really just hide n’ seek until I was about like 16 or 17. |
| Dylan: Now it’s paintball. |
| Carlos: Yes now it's paintball. I love paintball. |
| Dylan: Now “escondido” is relative to a larger verb. |
| Carlos: Right, “esconder”, “to hide.” |
| Dylan: But we also know the noun “escondite”. |
| Carlos: The hider? |
| Dylan: No, “the hiding place.” |
| Carlos: Ah okay, makes sense. |
| Dylan: Last but not least, the verb “buscar”. |
| Carlos: “To look for.” |
| Dylan: We have “buscar” twice in the conversation. |
| Carlos: Right, the first example, “¿Y quién busca a quién?” |
| Dylan: “Who looks for who?” |
| Carlos: And the last line of our conversation... |
| Dylan: “Yo tenía que buscarlas…” |
| Carlos: “I had to look for them.” |
| Dylan: But here is another similar example, “Tienes que buscarlas en el cuarto”. |
| Carlos: “You have to look for them in the room.” Whatever them is, I know it’s feminine like “las llaves”. |
| Dylan: “The keys” – Always I search for my keys. |
| Carlos: Or “una búsqueda”, “a search.” I like the sound of that, “búsqueda”. |
| Dylan: Now remember, in the last lesson, we had Periphrasis. |
| Carlos: Yeah, I remember I had to go to a online dictionary to figure out how to say it. I was saying prefaces. |
| Dylan: Well, we know better now. |
| Carlos: Yes, we do. |
| Dylan: Do you know how we express obligations in Spanish? |
| Carlos: Well, there are two ways. |
| Dylan: What are they? |
| Carlos: In Spanish, obligation can be either expressed personally or impersonally. |
| Dylan: Now a very obvious phrase comes to mind when I think of this. |
| Carlos: I was just about to go there. One of the ways to express obligation is to use the verb “tener”, “to have.” |
| Dylan: So if I say “tengo que estudiar”. |
| Carlos: You are saying “I have to study”, “tener que”, “to have to.” |
| Dylan: So that is a personal way of expressing obligation. |
| Carlos: Right. And with the impersonal, we can use the important verb “haber”. |
| Dylan: So with this use, “haber” becomes a verb of existence in a periphrastic construction. Can you think of an example? |
| Carlos: Well, when we say something like “hay que pagar”, “one must pay”, we are expressing an impersonal obligation because really who are we talking about. |
| Dylan: Exactly. Who the particular person is who must pay is not specified. |
| Carlos: Now there has to be a formula. |
| Dylan: For this formation yes and it is quite simple. |
| Carlos: ¡Qué dicha! |
| Dylan: Good one. Okay, first personal, using the verb tener + que + infinitivo del verbo. |
| Carlos: To have plus to plus the infinitive of the verb. |
| Dylan: And impersonal using the verb hay + que + infinitivo del verbo |
| Carlos: One must plus infinitive of verb. |
| Dylan: Let’s go through some examples so that this becomes really, really clear. |
| Carlos: “Yo tengo que salir”. “I have to go out.” So I know this is a personal obligation because one, we use the verb “tener” and two, because I am referring to myself very specific. |
| Dylan: “Tú tienes que descansar”. “You have to rest.” |
| Carlos: Also personal because once again we see the verb “haber” and we are referring to someone specific namely you. |
| Dylan: “Hay que tener paciencia”. |
| Carlos: “One must have patience.” Now we know this is impersonal because we see the verb “haber” and I have no idea who we are talking about. It could be anyone, it could be everyone. |
| Dylan: “Hay que estudiar para graduarse”. |
| Carlos: “One must study in order to graduate.” And once again, I think that must be true for everyone across the board. |
| Dylan: When talking about past obligation, we conjugate the verb “tener”, “to have”, in the imperfect past tense. The structure is the same. “Yo tengo que estudiar”, “I have to study” and it becomes “Yo tenía que estudiar”, “I had to study.” |
| Carlos: Or like we heard in our conversation “Yo tenía que buscarlas…” |
| Dylan: “I had to look for them.” There is something else we should also point out. |
| Carlos: What’s that? |
| Dylan: There is no direct way to translate impersonal expressions of obligations since the verb “haber” usually means “there is” or “there are.” |
| Carlos: So how do we translate them? |
| Dylan: Often when we translate impersonal expressions of obligation from Spanish to English, they become personal. |
| Carlos: Well, that does make a difference. Doesn’t it? |
| Dylan: Yes, a small one. |
| Carlos: Now there are lots of periphrastic constructions in Spanish which means there is a whole lot more studying to do. |
| Dylan: Nice. That was grammatically correct. |
Outro |
|---|
| Carlos: Relax, Dylan. We are teaching Spanish and not English. Okay guys, on that note, that just about does it for today. ¡Nos vemos! |
| Dylan: Hasta luego, ¡chao! |
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