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| INTRODUCTION |
| Megan: ¡Bienvenidos a Spanishpod101.com! |
| David: ¡Buenos días! Soy David. |
| Megan: And I’m Megan. Iberian Spanish Series, Lesson 14. |
| David: “¡Me encanta!”, “I love it!” |
| Megan: Last time we talked about Spanish food and how we express how much we like it. |
| David: Today’s lesson references Newbie Lesson 14 – “I really like that!”, so be sure to check that out on our website. |
| Megan: Also in this lesson we’re going to look at some new ways to express our enthusiasm about food. |
| Megan: To start out, let’s go back to Newbie Lesson 14 where we heard the following conversation: |
| DIALOGUE |
| JOSÉ: La crema volteada está rica. |
| FÁTIMA: ¡Sí, está cremosa! |
| JOSÉ: ¿Te gusta? |
| FÁTIMA: ¡La crema volteada me gusta mucho! |
| M3: This time with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| JOSÉ: La crema volteada está rica. |
| M3: “The upside down custard is delicious.” |
| FÁTIMA: ¡Sí, está cremosa! |
| F3: “Yes, it’s creamy!” |
| JOSÉ: ¿Te gusta? |
| M3: “Do you like it?” |
| FÁTIMA: ¡La crema volteada me gusta mucho! |
| F3: “I really like the upside down custard.” |
| Megan: Now let’s hear what that sounds like in Iberian Spanish: |
| David: ¡La leche frita está buenísima! |
| Megan: Y con canela… mmmm. |
| David: ¿Qué? ¿Te gusta? |
| Megan: ¡Me encanta! |
| M3: Once again slowly. Una vez más, esta vez lentamente. |
| David: ¡La leche frita está buenísima! |
| Megan: Y con canela… mmmm. |
| David: ¿Qué? ¿Te gusta? |
| Megan: ¡Me encanta! |
| M3: This time with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| David: “¡La leche frita está buenísima!” - “Fried milk is really good!” |
| Megan: “Y con canela… mmmm.” - “And if you sprinkle cinnamon, yum!” |
| David: “¿Qué? ¿Te gusta?” - “So you like it.” |
| Megan: “¡Me encanta!” - “I love it!” |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Megan: Hey, David, we’re talking again about food, aren’t we? |
| David: Well, I just can’t avoid it. When you get older you discover that food is maybe one of the best pleasures. I think I didn’t realize that some years ago. |
| Megan: When you get older, you sound like you’re going to be a real foggy, David. But I agree with you. When you have food and cuisines like you have here in Spain, you have to try everything and you end up liking everything too, unfortunately or fortunately, I’m not sure. But today we’re talking about “postres” or “desserts.” |
| David: Yes, and one of my favorite ones, “la leche frita”. I love so much desserts and sweet food. |
| Megan: I really wouldn’t know what to choose, “dulce o salado”, “sweet or salty”. But when you get older you kind of have to choose, you can’t have them all. |
| David: When you get older? You’re kidding me. |
| Megan: Okay! Let’s start now with a special feature of the Spanish language. I’m talking about the addition of suffixes to change the meaning and nuances of words. Today we’ll look at the superlative. Why don’t we listen again to the first sentence of the dialogue and compare it with the standard version? |
| David: Of course! In the Newbie Lesson we heard: |
| C: ¡La crema volteada está rica! |
| F: “The upside down custard is delicious!” |
| David: While in the Iberian version we have heard: “¡La leche frita está buenísima”, “Fried milk is really good!” |
| Megan: So, the first difference is the meal itself. In the Iberian version you talk about “leche frita”, the literal translation is “fried milk”, right? |
| David: Yes, and it sounds weird, right? I’d say it’s one of my favorite desserts, not very complex to cook and very country style, “muy de pueblo”. Have you tried “leche frita”, Megan? |
| Megan: Yes, I have, but it’s been a while, I don’t see it very often here in Madrid. |
| David: Did you like it? |
| Megan: It’s sweet and it’s fried, so what’s not to love? |
| David: Yes, and there are some of those “postres de pueblo”. |
| Megan: Right, country style desserts. |
| David: Yes, I really love those country style desserts, “leche frita” is one of them, one of my favorite ones is “tocino de cielo”. |
| Megan: “Tocino de cielo”, which literally means “bacon of Heaven”. |
| David: Yes, “tocino de cielo”, it doesn’t sound very tasty at first, but it’s a very, very sweet dessert. |
| Megan: But I know that here in Spain you love the pig, let’s just be frank about it. But this dessert doesn’t actually have any pig in it, right? |
| David: No, nothing. It’s a dessert you cook with “yema de huevo”. |
| Megan: “Egg yolks.” |
| David: And “azúcar” mainly. |
| Megan: “Sugar.” So, it only has two ingredients, more or less. |
| David: Yes, I would say just that. |
| Megan: I once heard that the reason that so many desserts have “yema” or egg yolks in them is because the egg white is used in the wine making process, and they would give the egg yolks that were left over to the nuns and the nuns were using them to make little pastries out of them. |
| David: Oh, really? I didn’t know that. |
| Megan: That’s what I heard, and still today you can go to a lot of convenience and buy little “pasteles”, little pastries and little treats. |
| David: Yes, maybe we should talk about one of those “conventos de clausura”, and talk about those nuns and how they spend their life there. |
| Megan: Right. |
| David: But, yes, I didn’t know about how they use this “clara de huevo” for making wine. |
| Megan: I heard that somewhere in a wine making book. |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: Okay! Let’s go back to the, the bit about the suffixes and the superlative. In this sentence it’s “buenísima” and this is the superlative in the singular, feminine form for “good”. |
| David: Yes, and if you analyze this word “buenísima” you can see that we have the root “buen-” plus the superlative suffix “-ísim” plus the feminine suffix “a”, so “buenísima” can be translated as: |
| Megan: “Very good” or “really good”. This is a very common way for adding emphasis to a word. You can practically put the superlative on any adjective or even adverb. You make an adjective into a superlative just by adding “ísimo” or “ísima”. “Altísimo” for “really, really tall”. |
| David: Right! And you know, there are many, many other examples you can use, “guapísimo”. |
| Megan: “Very beautiful.” |
| David: Or “listísima”. |
| Megan: “Really smart or clever.” |
| David: Yes, and sometimes, but in very casual occasions, you can play with it and double this suffix, so in a casual occasion you could say something like “buenisísima”. |
| Megan: So, you’re doubling it, you’re making it twice as good, “buenisísima”. |
| David: Right! And you have another example of this. |
| Megan: “Carisísimo”, just “really expensive”, unbelievably expensive. |
| David: Yes, you can hear this very often. You know, you’re talking with friends and you say, well, “esto es carisísimo”, “this is very, very expensive.” And I have another example that I like about the superlative in Spanish and I’m sure you have read this poem by Quevedo, it’s dedicated “a una nariz”. |
| Megan: To a nose. |
| David: Yes, it’s very, very funny. If you have the occasion, you should try to read this. You know, one of the… ¿estrofas? |
| Megan: “Estrofas” is “a verse.” |
| David: Yes, one of this verse says “Érase un naricísimo infinito”. |
| Megan: “Once upon an infinite nose.” |
| David: Yes, you know Quevedo was playing with the superlative and he was adding the superlative to a noun, which is not used, but he did it because he used to play very much with words and it’s a very, very funny poem. |
| Megan: And I think that’s one of the great things about these types of suffixes, that each person who speaks gets to create their own words every day just by adding a suffix, it’s total freedom. |
| David: Yes, that’s right. |
| Megan: That we don’t have in English, I think it’s great. Okay! Let’s move a bit more into the conversation. In the standard version we heard: |
| D: “La crema volteada me gusta mucho”. |
| G: “I really like the upside down custard.” |
| Megan: And now, in the Iberian version we can hear: |
| David: “¡Me encanta!”. |
| Megan: This literally means “It enchants me.”. |
| David: Right, but we use it very often when we say we like something very, very much. |
| Megan: Can you use it just with food or with other things, too? |
| David: Well, you can use it with anything you like very much. You can use it with, you know, a person, “me encanta este chico”. |
| Megan: Or a place. |
| David: “Me encanta la Plaza Mayor”. |
| Megan: Okay! And we don’t have a lot of other localisms in this conversation, but one other thing that I wanted to bring up is sort of a vocabulary difference. In Spain, the word “nata” is the word that’s used instead of “crema” when you’re talking about cream, like the type of cream you use to make whipped cream which is “nata montada” or the type of cream that you use in cooking and baking. And I believe in Latin America they use the term “crema” instead of that. And here in Spain, the term “crema” is used for things like… |
| David: “Crema pastelera”. |
| Megan: I think we would call it a custard, actually. I think it’s more, more frequent, like “crema catalana” which is a crème brullé or “crema inglesa”. And also there’s another word that is derived from “nata” which is “natillas”, which is a very, very popular dessert in Spain. |
| David: Right! And you know, you use “yema de huevo” and “azúcar”, too. |
| Megan: Yes, it’s another one. So, the egg yolk and sugar, which is sort of the backbone of Spanish desserts. |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: I know because my son is allergic to egg and he can’t have any desserts at all, so… |
| David: All right… |
| Megan: That’s definitely true. And one other use of the word “crema” in Spain is for soups, things like “crema de puerros,” which would be “cream of leek soup”. |
| David: Right, or “crema de vegetales”. |
| Megan: Which would be a vegetable cream soup. “Crema,” when it’s a soup it’s usually something a little bit more liquidy than a “puré”, which is a purée. |
Outro |
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| David: Okay! And that will do everything for today’s lesson. |
| Megan: See you soon! |
| David: ¡Nos vemos pronto! |
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