Learn how to use the verb "abrigarse" meaning "to bundle up"
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Megan: ¡Bienvenidos a Spanishpod101.com! |
| David: ¡Buenos días! Soy David. |
| Megan: And I’m Megan. Iberian Spanish Series, Lesson 15. |
| David: “I’m freezing!” |
| Megan: Last time we looked at how to talk about the deliciousness of dessert. Today we will talk about another favorite pastime, complaining about the weather. |
| David: Today’s lesson references Newbie Lesson 15 – “Brrr! It’s cold out!”, so be sure to check that out on our website. |
| Megan: Also in this lesson we’ll talk a bit about the verb “pillar”. |
| Megan: To get started, let’s go back to Newbie Lesson 15 where we heard the following conversation: |
| DIALOGUE |
| MARCELO: ¡Hace frío! ¿Tienes frío? |
| DANIELA: ¡Sí! Yo tengo frío. |
| MARCELO: Yo también tengo frío. |
| DANIELA: ¿Necesitamos abrigos? |
| MARCELO: Necesitamos gorros y guantes también. |
| M3: This time with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| MARCELO: ¡Hace frío! ¿Tienes frío? |
| M3: “It’s cold out. Are you cold?” |
| DANIELA: ¡Sí! Yo tengo frío. |
| F3: “Yes, I’m cold.” |
| MARCELO: Yo también tengo frío. |
| M3: “I’m cold, too.” |
| DANIELA: ¿Necesitamos abrigos? |
| F3: “Do we need coats?” |
| MARCELO: Necesitamos gorros y guantes también. |
| M3: “We need hats and gloves, too.” |
| Megan: Now, let’s hear what that sounds like in Iberian Spanish: |
| David: ¡Qué horror! ¡Qué frío tengo! |
| Megan: Yo también, ¡estoy helada! |
| David: ¡Uf! La verdad es que hace un frío que pela. |
| Megan: Abróchate la chaqueta, te vas a pillar un resfriado. |
| David: Tienes razón, debería haberme abrigado mejor. |
| M3: Once again, slowly. Una vez más, esta vez lentamente. |
| David: ¡Qué horror! ¡Qué frío tengo! |
| Megan: Yo también, ¡estoy helada! |
| David: ¡Uf! La verdad es que hace un frío que pela. |
| Megan: Abróchate la chaqueta, te vas a pillar un resfriado. |
| David: Tienes razón, debería haberme abrigado mejor. |
| M3: This time with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| David: “¡Qué horror! ¡Qué frío tengo!” - “This is awful! I’m so cold!” |
| Megan: “Yo también, ¡estoy helada!” - “Me too! I’m freezing!” |
| David: “¡Uf! La verdad es que hace un frío que pela.” - “Uff! It really is freezing out!” |
| Megan: “Abróchate la chaqueta, te vas a pillar un resfriado.” - “Pun up! You’re going to catch a cold!” |
| David: “Tienes razón, debería haberme abrigado mejor.” - “You’re right! I should have banned a lot better.” |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Megan: Okay! I don’t like this stereotype too much, but I’ll go ahead and do so anyway. Spanish people, at least here in Madrid, really tend to exaggerate about the weather. It hardly ever even rains here at it never snows. But still, the slightest fluctuation in temperature can bring about a huge conversation about how cold or hot it is. Am I wrong, David? |
| David: Probably not, but the weather here can be pretty extreme, especially in Northern Spain and in the mountains. Think about all of those people who got caught in the snow storms coming back from Semana Santa. |
| Megan: Right! “Semana Santa” is “Holy week” here and it’s the big spring break holiday and when you’re supposed to go the beach and enjoy the sun, but instead, this year there was a sudden cold snap and a lot of people were freezing cold and probably had lots of conversations just like the one in our lesson this week. |
| David: Definitely! |
| Megan: Okay! And since we’re talking about the cold, can I ask you about that sort of weird Spanish belief that you can’t expose your kidneys to cold air or it will make you deathly ill? |
| David: No. Definitely, that’s true. Let’s say something like “no lleves o no dejes tus riñones al aire”, a typical thing that an “abuela” might say. “Get to keep your kidneys covered up.” |
| Megan: Right! So, the “abuela” says “No dejes los riñones al aire”, “Don’t leave your kidneys in the air.” I guess there’s probably some truth to it. |
| David: Yes, sure it is. |
| Megan: Well, okay! But it definitely surprised me the first time I heard someone say it, it seemed so anatomical. But what about bare feet, could I walk bare footed over a cold floor in Spain? |
| David: Are you kidding me? “Vas a pillar un resfriado”. |
| Megan: “You’ll catch a cold.” Well, we’ll look some more at that expression later on. Okay! Let’s get into this week’s conversation. First off, let’s compare how to express the idea of being cold in the Newbie dialogue. |
| D: “¡Sí! ¡Yo tengo frío!” |
| G: “Yes, I’m cold!” |
| Megan: And how we said it in the Iberian version: |
| David: “¡Qué horror! ¡Qué frío tengo!”. “This is awful! I’m so cold!” |
| Megan: Obviously, the Iberian version is a lot more exaggerated. |
| David: Definitely! But totally realistic. |
| Megan: Why do you reverse the order of the words from “tengo frío” to “qué frío tengo”? |
| David: Yes, this is a way to emphasize or exaggerate. It literally means “What cold I have!”. |
| Megan: But the not literal translation would be “I’m so cold!” and just a quick point, “frío” here is a noun, not an adjective. So, you can’t say “Soy frío” to mean “I’m cold!”, which would be the literal translation from English. |
| David: Yes, but you can say “I’m cold”, “Soy frío”, or someone is “una persona fría”. If I say “eres muy fría”, I’m saying you’re very cold, I’m saying you are someone who doesn’t express her feelings. |
| Megan: Sort of non emotional. I think we use the word cold that way in English, too. “To be cold” means “to be distant”. So, if you say “Soy frío” that’s what you’re saying. |
| David: Right! If you say “tengo frío” you say you’re feeling that cold temperature. If you say “Yo soy frío” you say you’re not emotional. |
| Megan: Okay! There’re two interesting verbs that came up in this conversation that I wanted to look at very quickly: “abrigarse” and “abrocharse”. |
| David: Right! In the Newbie dialogue they said: |
| D: “¿Necesitamos abrigos?” |
| G: “Do we need coats?” |
| David: And I said “Debería haberme abrigado mejor”, “I should have banned a lot better.” |
| Megan: So, “abrigarse” means the same as “llevar un abrigo” or “llevar una cazadora” which is another word for jacket or coat, here in Spain. |
| David: Really, it means to wear whatever it takes to protect yourself from the cold. |
| Megan: Okay! And I wanted to point out this really useful construction that you’ve used: “debería haber hecho… lo que sea”. You said “debería haberme abrigado”, and “debería haber” means “I should have done whatever.” I would suggest the beginners just learn this as a “frase hecha” or a set phrase that you can add any Past Participle to it. So useful for talking about something that you should’ve done in the past, but you didn’t. “Debería haber estudiado más”, “I should’ve studied more.” |
| David: “Debería haber llamado antes”, “I should have called earlier.” “Debería haber comido algo”. |
| Megan: “I should have eaten something.” Here, “deber” is in the Conditional Tense and it means “I should”, “haber hecho” means “to have done”. It’s a way of constructing the Past Tense. What about the verb “abrocharse”? This verb can mean all sort of things, can’t it? |
| David: True. It can mean “to button up your seatbelt”, “abrocharse el cinturón”, “to zip up or button up a jacket”, “abrocharse la chaqueta”. The typical parent always tells his or her kid “abróchate” before they go out on a cold day. |
| Megan: Okay! And what about the expression “estoy helado”? Does this mean you’re an ice-cream? |
| David: No, that could be “soy un helado”, which would be pretty surreal. “Helado” is a noun that means ice-cream, “helado” as an “adjetivo” or adjective, means “frozen” or “freezing”, so “estoy helado” or “estoy helada”, if it’s feminine, if you’re a woman, means “I’m freezing.” |
| Megan: “Helado” and “helada” come from the verb “helar” which means “to freeze”, don’t think? |
| David: Yes. So, that’s the word “hielo”, which means “ice”. |
| Megan: Can you say that word again? |
| David: “Hielo”. |
| Megan: I just wanted to point out very quickly that the first syllable in the word “hielo”, “h-i-e-l-o”, is pronounced “ye” like the “Y” in English. “Hielo”. Okay, David! Can you think of any other ways of saying you’re cold that we haven’t touched upon yet? |
| David: You want, you know, formal or casual forms? |
| Megan: Casual, but not too casual. |
| David: Okay! Let’s talk about “estoy pelado de frío”. |
| Megan: “Estoy pelado de frío”, this is like you’ve already been peeled apart. |
| David: Yes, like to peel off or something for the cold, or let me think. Well, you know, we are so exaggerated so if you’re very, very cold you can say “estoy muerto de frío”. |
| Megan: “Estoy muerto de frío”. Like what we saw, “estoy muerto de hambre”, or it’s the same sort of idea. |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: Okay! And I wanted to ask you one more question about the sound “Uf” which to me is a very Spanish sound because we don’t make that sound in English in the same way that you do it. Sometime we forget that actually that all of the sounds that you make are different in different languages. What would you say the word “Uf” means, or the sound? |
| David: “Uf”. Yes, you know, it means something like “It’s too much!” in any situation you may think about that. So, “Do you have a lot of work?”. “Uf, too much!” |
| Megan: Yes, right! |
| David: Or “Is it very cold?”. “Uf, really, really cold!” |
| Megan: I think we would say “Oh God!” |
| David: “Uf”, yes, it’s very… I thought that was a very universal sound. “Uf”. So, you don’t say “uf”. |
| Megan: No, not in quite the same way, I don’t think we do. Okay! Why don’t we go over some of the idiomatic expressions that came up in today’s conversation? |
| David: Okay! Let’s start with “¡qué horror!”. |
| Megan: Okay, this is really commonly used here in Spain. But it’s pretty informal, wouldn’t you say? |
| David: Yes, very much. “¡Qué horror!” is something that we say when something is unbearably bad. |
| Megan: Right! It literally means “What a horror!”. Here I translated it as “This is awful!”, though I also could’ve said “This sucks!”, though I think that’s a bit more vulgar than “¡Qué horror!”. What about the other expression “hace un frío que pela” which literally means “It makes a cold that peels”? I guess the peeling part is referring to the way that your skin feels. That’s pretty a vivid image there. |
| David: Yes, es super exagerado, I know. Though there are expressions even more extreme, but I’m not sure we are allowed to get quite that vulgar. |
| Megan: Yes. I was kind of thinking the same thing. Maybe another day. Okay! There’s one other expression here that’s really common that I wanted to talk about. “Te vas a pillar un resfriado”, which means “You’re going to catch a cold.” And the verb “pillar” is used a lot in Spain, and I don’t think it’s used the same way in most of Latin America. |
| David: Well, “pillar” usually means “to catch”, “grab” or “to grasp something”. |
| Megan: Can you give us some other examples using the verb “pillar”? |
| David: Of course. “Pillar sitio en un restaurante”. |
| Megan: Which is “to grab a table at a restaurant”. |
| David: Or “pillar las entradas del cine”. |
| Megan: “To grab the movie tickets”. “Pillar” here sort of implies that there might be some difficulty in getting these things and that they could escape you because they’re in high demand or they’re just out of your reach. How about another example? |
| David: Yes. “Pillar a alguien en una mentira”. |
| Megan: “To catch somebody in a lie.” |
| David: Right! And if you catch someone lying you can say “¡te he pillado!”. |
| Megan: “I caught you!” Words that no one wants to hear, right? That reminds me of a game that the little kids here play “pilla, pilla”, which literally means “catch catch”. This is the Spanish version of tag. |
| David: Right! The kid runs around and screaming “¡te voy a pillar! ¡te voy a pillar!” and then, if they are lucky, “¡te he pillado!”. |
| Megan: So, when you were a kid you were usually the one “pillado” or the one “pillando”? |
| David: Well, I wasn’t caught very often, so I was the one who caught others. |
| Megan: Okay! So you were the fast one. |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: Okay! Now going back to the dialogue, I wanted to quickly mention one thing. I could’ve also said “te vas a resfriar” or “te vas a coger un resfriado” and it wouldn’t have meant the same thing, right? |
| David: Yes, “te vas a resfriar” or “te vas a coger un resfriado” also mean “You’re going to catch a cold.” |
| Megan: Because the verb “coger” in some Latin American countries can have sexual connotations, but here in Spain it doesn’t at all, right? |
| David: No, not really. |
| Megan: And here you can “coger el autobús” or “catch a bus” and that’s all it means. |
| David: Yes, that’s right. I think that if you say “coger el autobús” in Mexico or Argentina, oh well, maybe you can get in trouble. |
| Megan: But, “pillar” and “coger” basically mean the same thing in Spain, don’t they? |
| David: Right, “to catch” or “to grab”. Though they aren’t always used interchangeably or “intercambiables” here in Spain. ¿Lo pillas? |
| Megan: Sí, lo pillo perfectamente. “¿Lo pillas?” means “Do you catch my drift?” |
Outro |
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| David: Okay! And I think that will do it for today’s lesson. |
| Megan: See you soon! |
| David: ¡Nos vemos pronto! |
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