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| INTRODUCTION |
| Megan: ¡Bienvenidos a Spanishpod101.com! |
| David: ¡Buenos días! Soy David. |
| Megan: And I’m Megan. Iberian Spanish Series, Lesson 18. |
| David: “¡Con esto te empapas!” |
| Megan: “You can really get soaked in this!” Well, last time we went to Asturias talking about the fog and clouds, the “niebla” and the “nubes” and this week we’re in the Basque country talking about all of the beautiful and funny words for drizzle which is “llovizna”. |
| David: So, I’m sure we’ll have to talk about the hitch regional differences in Spain. |
| Megan: Definitely! Oh, and before I forget, this lesson references Newbie Lesson 18 – “Is it raining?”, so be sure to check that one out. |
| Megan: Let’s go back to Newbie Lesson 18 where we heard the following conversation: |
| DIALOGUE |
| CARMEN: ¿Está lloviendo? |
| PAOLA: No. No es lluvia; es llovizna. |
| CARMEN: Mira, las gotas son chiquititas. ¿Las ves? |
| PAOLA: Sí, las veo, pero tampoco es llovizna. Es garúa. |
| CARMEN: Ya veo, Paola. Es garúa y es muy misteriosa. |
| M2: This time with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| CARMEN: ¿Está lloviendo? |
| F3: “Is it raining?” |
| PAOLA: No. No es lluvia; es llovizna. |
| M3: “No, it’s not rain. It’s a drizzle.” |
| CARMEN: Mira, las gotas son chiquititas. ¿Las ves? |
| F3: “Look, the raindrops are tiny, do you see them?” |
| PAOLA: Sí, las veo, pero tampoco es llovizna. Es garúa. |
| M3: “Yes, I see them. But it’s not a drizzle, either. It’s mist.” |
| CARMEN: Ya veo, Paola. Es garúa y es muy misteriosa. |
| F3: “Now I get it, Paola. It’s mist and it’s very mysterious.” |
| Megan: David, have you ever heard the word “garúa” before? |
| David: No, never. |
| Megan: Okay! Well, now let’s hear how Inoa and Fede, two Spaniards from different regions, talk about the same kind of rain as “garúa” in Iberian Spanish. |
| Megan: ¿Está lloviendo? |
| David: Está más bien chispeando. |
| Megan: Mira, está cayendo chirimiri. |
| David: En Madrid lo llamamos calabobos. |
| Megan: ¿Ah, sí? ¡Qué raro! Aunque no lo parece, con esto te empapas. |
| David: Pues dicen que habrá niebla y llovizna toda la tarde. |
| M3: Once again, slowly. Una vez más, esta vez lentamente. |
| Megan: ¿Está lloviendo? |
| David: Está más bien chispeando. |
| Megan: Mira, está cayendo chirimiri. |
| David: En Madrid lo llamamos calabobos. |
| Megan: ¿Ah, sí? ¡Qué raro! Aunque no lo parece, con esto te empapas. |
| David: Pues dicen que habrá niebla y llovizna toda la tarde. |
| M3: This time with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| Megan: “¿Está lloviendo?” - “Is it raining?” |
| David: “Está más bien chispeando.” - “Actually, it’s a spitting rain.” |
| Megan: “Mira, está cayendo chirimiri.” - “Look, it’s ‘chirimiri’.” |
| David: “En Madrid lo llamamos calabobos.” - “In Madrid we call it ‘calabobos’.” |
| Megan: “¿Ah, sí? ¡Qué raro! Aunque no lo parece, con esto te empapas.” - “Really? That’s so weird even though it doesn’t seem like it, you can get really soaked in this!” |
| David: “Pues dicen que habrá niebla y llovizna toda la tarde.” - “Well, they say there’s going to be fog and drizzle all afternoon.” |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| David: This week there are a lot of differences, ¿no te parece? |
| Megan: Definitely! And we even get to hear a Basque word in this week’s dialogue. |
| David: “Chirimiri”. |
| Megan: I love that word! There’s a “pinchos” at my apartment named that. In Basque the “ch” sound is usually spelled with a “TX” instead of a “CH”, so those words look extra cool, don’t they? |
| David: Right! “Pinchos” are really, really typical Basque tapa. |
| Megan: A “pincho” is a snack that has a little toothpick or a “pincho” through it, isn’t it? |
| David: Right! “Pinchar” means “to stick something”. |
| Megan: “Pinchar” is one of those false cognates, words that give us trouble because it sounds like “to pinch”, but it actually means “to poke” or “to pierce”. My son makes that mistake a lot in English, he always says pinch when he means to say poke. |
| David: I love the way some “pinchos” bars charge you by the number of toothpicks that you have on your plate at the end of the night. |
| Megan: Oh, yes, that’s so weird, but cool! You’re making me hungry just talking about it. |
| David: Okay! It didn’t take as long to start talking about food again, did it? |
| Megan: No, everything seems to lead at that. |
| David: Yes. Okay! Vamos a ir al grano. Before we get to “enrollado”, in our food talk. |
| Megan: We’re going to go to the heart of the matter. “Enrollado” that means “to get caught up in.” |
| David: One of these days, we’ll have to talk about all the different ways “rollar” and “enrollar” are used in Spain. |
| Megan: Okay, I’ll put it on our list. |
| David: Right! |
| Megan: But where should we start for today’s lesson? |
| David: Well, since we have a “palabra vasca”, a “Basque word”, in the conversation, I wanted to explain a little bit about the Basque language. |
| Megan: ¡Adelante! It has such an interesting and mysterious history. |
| David: Okay! Well, as you know “vasco” or “euskera”, this is the word for the language in Basque, it’s the oldest language spoken in Spain. It’s so old that it isn’t related to any of other Indo-European languages. |
| Megan: Well, it’s just mind bungling, isn’t it? I guess we should explain that the Basque country is very mountainous and in the Pyrenees, which are the mountains that go in between Spain and France, and so it was probably very, that part of the world was very isolated up until relatively recently. |
| David: Right! And that’s how the language survived for thousands of years and didn’t get taken over by Latin like the other native Iberian languages did. |
| Megan: And then Basques contributed a lot of words in Spanish, hasn’t it, like “chirimiri”? But tell us one that might surprise a lot of people. |
| David: All right! So, one is “izquierda” which means “left”. |
| Megan: “Izquierda” is a Basque word because the Spanish version was “siniestro”, but now “siniestro” just means “sinister” in Spanish, so I guess “siniestro” got a bad rap so “izquierda” took over the meaning of “left”. |
| David: And “izquierda” comes from the Basque “ezquerra”, and the left side or being left handed used to be viewed as a sort of evil. |
| Megan: Sort of sinister. “Siniestro”. |
| David: Right! |
| Megan: Well, I’m glad that we’re a little bit more enlightened about that today. Okay! Great history and cultural lesson, David. We’ll talk a little bit more about the regional languages in Spain in the cultural point for this lesson. Now, let’s get into the grammar a little bit. |
| David: Okay! So, you’ll notice there are lot of “gerundios”. |
| Megan: Gerunds. “Lloviendo”, “chispeando”, “cayendo”, ... “Raining”, “spitting rain”, “falling”,... |
| David: Right! When you’re talking about the Present Progressive in Spanish, you always use the verb “estar” plus the Gerund. |
| Megan: In this lesson I said: |
| David: ¿Está lloviendo? |
| Megan: Okay! And then you say “está más bien chispeando”. We’re going to talk about “chispeando” in a minute. But can you explain what “más bien” means? |
| David: “Está más bien chispeando”. Here, “más bien” means it’s actually spitting rain or really it’s spitting rain. |
| Megan: So, when you say “más bien” you’re adding new information or correcting something that I said previously. |
| David: Right! It’s not that what you said it’s wrong, but I’m “matizándolo”. How do you say “matizándolo” in English? |
| Megan: “Matizar” means to give something a nuance or a slightly different meaning, more meaning. |
| David: Eso es. |
| Megan: Can you give us another example of when you might use “más bien”? |
| David: For example, in the job, my boss could say “Os ha quedado bien este informe”, and I would say, “Más bien me ha quedado bien”. |
| Megan: So, you say that your boss is saying “You guys did a good job on the report” and you say “Well, no, really! It was me who did the good job.” “Más bien yo”, then so… |
| David: So sometimes you just want to, you know, not only to give a nuance, but to make a bit of correction. |
| Megan: To change the meaning. |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: Okay! One last grammar thing, when you say “They said there’s going to be fog and drizzle all afternoon”, you don’t use the verb “to go” and “to be”, “there’s going to be” like we do in English. |
| David: No, I say “Pues dicen que habrá niebla y llovizna toda la tarde”. |
| Megan: So, when you say “habrá”, you’re saying “there’s going to be”. “Habrá” is the Future Tense of “hay” which comes from the verb “haber”. |
| David: Right! And this is a good point. Fíjate cómo en la lección Newbie dicen: |
| D: No. No es lluvia; es llovizna. |
| Megan: Here they do use the verb “ser” or “to be”, “es llovizna”, “It is drizzle.” But that’s different from “Habrá llovizna”, “It will drizzle” or “It’s going to drizzle.” |
| David: Yes, and then you could have “está lloviznando” or “está cayendo llovizna”. |
| Megan: Which both mean “It’s drizzling” though “está cayendo llovizna” literally means “It’s drizzle falling.” |
| David: I think you get it. And notice that I say “toda la tarde”. |
| Megan: “All afternoon”. |
| David: “Tarde” is feminine so you have to make “todo” into “toda” so it agrees with “tarde”, “toda la tarde”. |
| Megan: And I wanted to mention one thing, “tarde” in Spain can refer to the day all the way up until 9 or 10 o’clock at night, right? |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: And so it’s not just afternoon, it’s afternoon, evening and part of night. |
| David: Yes, I would say that it’s “tarde” until the sun falls. |
| Megan: The sun goes down. |
| David: Yes, and… |
| Megan: Which can be almost 11 o’clock in the summer, right? |
| David: Right! When it gets dark we say “noche”. |
| Megan: “Noche”, okay! So, to recap, we Anglophones have to remember that “to be” can only translate as “ser” or “estar”, but also as “hay” or “haber”. “Hay llovizna”, “There is drizzle!”. “Está lloviznando”, “Está cayendo llovizna”, “It’s drizzling.” And finally as we heard in the Newbie Lesson: |
| D: Es llovizna. |
| Megan: Which means “It is drizzle.” And we have to get used to making the gender of words agree like “toda la tarde”. Okay! After all that grammar, let’s have some fun with the weird and poetic words that we have for rain in this week’s conversation. |
| David: Well, we already mentioned the Basque word “chirimiri”. You don’t need to be Basque to say this word, but you know, you can hear “chirimiri” very often in Madrid, for example, or maybe Andalucía. |
| Megan: Seems almost like words like that are kind of trendy, aren’t they? That people like the way they sound and… |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: Okay! And this fine rain that we’re talking about, I’m not really sure we have a word for it in English, at least not where I’m from, because we don’t even have this kind of rain. The first time I saw it was in Mexico and I’m almost sure it has to be the same as “garúa” from the Newbie dialogue. |
| D: Pero tampoco es llovizna. Es garúa. |
| Megan: It’s sort of between a mist, which is a “bruma” in Spanish, and a drizzle, which is “llovizna”. |
| David: Right! Green Spain is very, very wet so it’s not surprising that they have lots of words for rain. Another word for rain like “chirimiri” is “orbayo”. It means the same thing, but it’s used in Asturias. |
| Megan: Okay! And what about “calabobos”? “Calar” means “to soak” and I think this word is just hilarious. Can you explain it? |
| David: Like you said, it’s a “palabra compuesta por ‘cala’ y ‘bobo’”. |
| Megan: A compound word formed from “cala” and “bobos”. |
| David: “Cala” means “to drench something” and “bobos” means “tontos”. |
| Megan: “Tontos” means “sillies”, “lightly stupid people”. So, “calabobos” literally means “drenches stupid people”. ¡Qué palabra más rara! So, I’m thinking this isn’t really a formal word. |
| David: It’s totally colloquial and since you’re talking about it, “¡Qué raro!”. This is a really common expression that means “That’s so weird”, that’s what Inoa in the conversation says after Fede uses the word “calabobos”. |
| Megan: Oh, right! And Inoa is a really typical Basque name for a girl. Would you say “calabobos”? I’ve heard other people say it, but it hardly ever rains in Madrid. |
| David: Yes, I use that very often. |
| Megan: And what about “chispeando”? I learned this one from my son, Óscar. A “chispa” is “a spark”, so “chispear” means “to spark”. |
| David: Yes, when we’re talking about rain, “chispear” is when just a little tiny bit of rain is coming down. |
| Megan: The spitting rain, which now that I think of it, it’s kind of disgusting, but it’s not as steady as “llovizna”, it’s kind of erratic, you don’t know if it’s really going to rain or not. And what about the word “empaparse”? |
| David: “Aunque no lo parece…” |
| Megan: “Even though it doesn’t seem like it...” |
| David: “Con esto te empapas”. “Empaparse” means to get completely soaked, “hasta los huesos”. |
| Megan: “To your bones” or “from head to toe”, basically. So, even though “chirimiri” and “calabobos” are really light rains, you can still get totally soaked in them. |
| David: Exactly! Like they said in the Newbie dialogue, the drops are really, really tiny. |
| C: Las gotas son chiquititas. |
| F: “The rain drops are tiny.” |
| Megan: It’s sort of deceptive, like a “bobo” you go out thinking you’re not going to get wet and then you do. What other kind of rain can “empaparte”? |
| David: Un “chubasco”, por ejemplo. |
| Megan: A “chubasco” is a downpour. “Chubasco” is a word that comes from “gallego”, another language spoken in Spain. The word in “gallego” for “lluvia” is “chuvia”. |
| David: “Chuva”. |
| Megan: “Chuva”, okay! Another word for “downpour” is “chaparrón”. Does it ever “llover gatos y perros” in Spain, rain cats and dogs? |
| David: Well, not very often, but sometimes it does. |
| Megan: But you don’t say “llover gatos y perros” in Spanish. |
| David: No, we don’t say. We say “caer chuzos de punta”. It’s very strange, yes. |
| Megan: And “llover a cántaros”. |
| David: “Llover a cántaros”. |
| Megan: Right! |
| David: Right! |
Outro |
|---|
| David: Bueno. There would be plenty other lessons for us to “profundizar” all this. |
| Megan: “Profundizar” means “to get into it deeper”. Definitely! See you next time! |
| David: ¡Hasta la próxima! |
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