Learn the equivalents of “Why?” and “Because” in Spanish
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Megan: ¡Bienvenidos a Spanishpod101.com! |
| David: ¡Buenos días! Me llamo David. |
| Megan: And I’m Megan. Iberian Spanish Series, Lesson 19. |
| David: “¡Mira qué cielo más bonito!” |
| Megan: Last time we looked at some interesting words about drizzle, like “calabobos”, “orbayo”, “chirimiri”, “llovizna”... Remember? |
| David: Today’s lesson references Newbie Lesson 19 – “Look! The moon is full.” |
| Megan: And in this lesson we’re going to talk a bit about the region of Galicia, which is a region in the North-West of Spain that a lot of people don’t know a lot about, outside of Spain. |
| Megan: To get started, we’re going to go back to Newbie Lesson 19 where we heard the following conversation: |
| DIALOGUE |
| GLICERIO: ¡Mira, Fiorela! La luna está llena. |
| FIORELA: Es muy brillante. |
| GLICERIO: Hay muchas estrellas también. |
| FIORELA: Es verdad. Veo escorpión. ¿Ves? |
| GLICERIO: ¡Sí, mira la cola! |
| M3: This time with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| GLICERIO: ¡Mira, Fiorela! La luna está llena. |
| M3: “Look, Fiorella! The moon is full!” |
| FIORELA: Es muy brillante. |
| F3: “It’s really bright!” |
| GLICERIO: Hay muchas estrellas también. |
| M3: “There are a lot of stars, too.” |
| FIORELA: Es verdad. Veo escorpión. ¿Ves? |
| F3: “It’s true. I see Scorpio. Do you see?” |
| GLICERIO: ¡Sí, mira la cola! |
| M3: “Yes, look at the tail.” |
| Megan: Now, let’s hear what that sounds like in Iberian Spanish. |
| Megan: ¡Mira qué cielo más bonito se ha quedado! |
| David: Las nubes por delante de la luna le dan un aspecto muy inquietante. |
| Megan: Y, a pesar de las nubes, se ve la Vía Láctea. |
| David: ¿Sabes que en Europa a la Vía Láctea también se le llama “El Camino de Santiago”? |
| Megan: ¿De verdad? ¿Por qué? |
| David: Porque guiaba a los peregrinos que iban a Santiago. |
| M3: Once again, slowly. Una vez más, esta vez lentamente. |
| Megan: ¡Mira qué cielo más bonito se ha quedado! |
| David: Las nubes por delante de la luna le dan un aspecto muy inquietante. |
| Megan: Y, a pesar de las nubes, se ve la Vía Láctea. |
| David: ¿Sabes que en Europa a la Vía Láctea también se le llama “El Camino de Santiago”? |
| Megan: ¿De verdad? ¿Por qué? |
| David: Porque guiaba a los peregrinos que iban a Santiago. |
| M3: This time with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| Megan: “¡Mira qué cielo más bonito se ha quedado!” - “Look at how beautiful the sky is.” |
| David: “Las nubes por delante de la luna le dan un aspecto muy inquietante.” - “The clouds in front of the moon make it look so spooky.” |
| Megan: “Y, a pesar de las nubes, se ve la Vía Láctea.” - “Even with the clouds you can still see the Milky Way.” |
| David: “¿Sabes que en Europa a la Vía Láctea también se le llama “El Camino de Santiago”?” - “Do you know that in Europe the Milky Way is also called Saint James Way?” |
| Megan: “¿De verdad? ¿Por qué?” - “Really? Why?” |
| David: “Porque guiaba a los peregrinos que iban a Santiago.” - “Because it guided pilgrims going to Santiago.” |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Megan: Hey, David, how are things going? You just got back from Asturias, didn’t you? |
| David: Yes, right! You’re right, Megan. It’s been really great. |
| Megan: So, what holidays were you were celebrating when you went outside of Madrid to travel? |
| David: Well, we were celebrating el “Día del Trabajo”. |
| Megan: Right, May the 1st, the Day of the Workers, which Spanish people celebrate by not working. |
| David: That’s a very good celebration. And we were celebrating in Madrid, only in Madrid, we celebrate the Day of Madrid, it’s May the 2nd. |
| Megan: And what exactly are you celebrating? |
| David: Well, we celebrate the day when the people from Madrid raised against the French troops which were occupying Madrid and Spain and that’s exactly now 200 years ago. |
| Megan: Right! It’s the bicentennial, so this is “el 2 de Mayo” which if anybody is, knows about “Goya”, the painter, would recognize that from some of his paintings because he depicted a lot of the battles that happened during that time. Maybe we’ll have some time at another time to go a little bit deeper into that, because it’s pretty interesting, but I think it’s time to start the lesson for today. Okay! There are a couple of things in today’s conversation that we’ll help us to remember different characteristics of Spanish spoken in Spain as opposed to Latin America that we studied in previous lessons. So, David, for example, let’s take a look at the first line of the dialogue and both the standard and Iberian versions. |
| David: Sure! In the Newbie Lesson we heard: |
| M2: ¡Mira, Fiorela! ¡La luna está llena! |
| M3: “Look, Fiorela! The moon is full!” |
| David: And in the Iberian version we rerolled it like: “¡Mira qué cielo más bonito se ha quedado!”. |
| Megan: Right, okay! You read this line in the correct sort of academic way, but you, could you say it again just like you would in any casual context, like if you’re talking to a friend? |
| David: Okay. It would sound like “¡Mira qué cielo más bonito se ha ‘quedao’!”. |
| Megan: Okay, good! So, notice that in a more casual situation, in Spanish we tend to eat up or “comer” the “D” in the word “quedado” in the little suffix of the Past Participle, which is “ado”, it turns into “ao”. |
| David: Right! And of course, this is not the rule and if you’re speaking in a more formal situation, you will have to make the effort to say “quedado”. But, if you visit Spain you will hear this. |
| Megan: So, what you’re saying is it can sound a little sloppy if, but real, because that’s really how most people talk most of the time. So, let’s review another characteristic of Spanish spoken in Madrid, in Southern Castilla. The standard version we heard was: |
| F2: “Es verdad. Veo Escorpión, ¿ves?” |
| F3: “It’s true. I see Scorpio. Do you see?” |
| David: And the way you said this phrase in the Iberian version was: “¿De verdad? ¿Por qué?”. |
| Megan: Okay! We already talked about this in a previous lesson, but let’s review again. When the “D” is at the end of a word, people from Castilla, Southern Castilla, pronounce it like “th” as like in “thing”, the “th” sound. |
| David: “¿De verdad?” |
| Megan: Which means “Really?” |
| David: “¿De verdad?” |
| Megan: But, again, if you’re learning Spanish, you don’t have to pronounce it like that. You can just make an effort to pronounce it “verdad” with the final “D” hard. This is just a quick review of pronunciation. And now, we’re going to talk about the “CT” combination in Spanish, that you can find in a lot of words, particularly words that come straight from Latin and didn’t evolve, they’re what they call “palabras cultas”, words that didn’t go through a phonetic evolution. And you can find it in two phrases that we had today. |
| David: Right! The first one, “Las nubes por delante de la luna le dan un aspecto muy inquietante”. |
| Megan: “The clouds in front of the moon make it look really spooky” or “so spooky”. |
| David: Yes, so notice that you have to distinctly pronounce both consonants “as-pec-to”. |
| Megan: “Aspecto”. And the second one was in “Y, a pesar de las nubes, se ve la Vía Láctea”. |
| David: Which means “Even with the clouds you can still see the Milky Way.” Again, pronounce both consonants. “Láctea”. |
| Megan: And why did you want to talk about this particular consonant combination? |
| David: Well, it has to do with today’s conversation. You know that Santiago de Compostela is in Galicia. |
| Megan: Right, and Galicia is one of the regions in Spain that speaks a different language, has its own language which is Galician, Galician. |
| David: ¿Galician? |
| Megan: Sorry, estoy hablando como una loca. Galician. I’m not used to say it in English, sorry. |
| David: Okay! But you can call it “gallego” in Spanish or even “galego” which is the way they call it in Galician or “gallego”. Okay! Then people from Galicia pronounce Spanish their way. We’ll get a bit deeper into this maybe a bit later in some other lessons. And one of these special characteristics is that they eat up the “C” in the combination “CT.” |
| Megan: Right! So, if you travel to Galicia, which I very much recommend that you do because it’s so beautiful, you will hear people saying “aspeto” instead of “aspecto”. |
| David: Right! And you could hear something like “Vía Látea” instead of “Vía Láctea”. |
| Megan: Which I think makes sense, because “lacte” turned into “leche” in Spanish because people traditionally had trouble pronouncing that group, so it makes sense that in the words that it stayed in, that it came in later, sort of “palabra culta”, that it’s going through the same evolution again, that nobody wants to say those two letters together. |
| David: And “leche” in Spanish, which is milk, is “leite” in “galego”. |
| Megan: Right, “leite”. So, just to reiterate what we were talking about, not only are there differences between Iberian and Latin American Spanish, but you can also find differences within the Iberian Peninsula. There’re really different dialects of Spanish spoken within the Iberian Peninsula and each dialect is affected by the history of the region and some regions have their own languages like Galicia, which we’ve seen, and the Basque country, and those languages affect the Spanish that’s spoken in those regions. |
| David: Very good, perfectly right! |
| Megan: So, how about if we check out another expression from the dialogue? |
| David: Great! I think it can be interesting to talk about “el Camino de Santiago”. Have you heard about it, Megan? |
| Megan: Oh, yes! It’s one of the things that people love to do when they go on vacation in the summer. |
| David: Yes? |
| Megan: Have you walked to? |
| David: Yes, well I have walked just a minimum to get “la Compostela” which is a document which certifies that I have reached Santiago, fulfilling the terms required by the charge. |
| Megan: And if I’m not mistaken, when you get that document, don’t you get time off in Purgatory? |
| David: Well, I’ve been trying to read what it contains and I think it doesn’t forgive all your sins, it just said that you have reached Santiago and you have done this with, you know, a spiritual aim. |
| Megan: So, they must have added that part out, or that’s just an urban myth, because I’ve heard that. |
| David: Yes, I think that history, yes, when you went to Santiago after having walked the “Camino de Santiago”, you got all your sins forbidden by the Church. |
| Megan: Wow, that’s… No wonder why so many people did it. What is the minimum that you have to walk to get the “Compostela”? |
| David: It’s 100 km if you walk and 200 km if you go by bicycle. Well, it took us about 5 days walking. |
| Megan: And so, what do you say in Spanish when you’re talking about walking the “Camino”? |
| David: Well, we use the expression “hacer el Camino de Santiago”. |
| Megan: “To do Saint James’ Way” which is, I think, how they translated it in English, because “Santiago” means “Saint James”, and think it’s a, it’s pretty old term, even in English, because they were people even in the Middle Ages who did the “Camino de Santiago” from France and from all parts of Europe, right? But this pilgrimage, even though it originally had a very catholic meaning, now it’s just a sort of cultural and touristic phenomenon, isn’t it? It’s walked by people still from all over Europe, isn’t it? |
| David: Así es, peregrinos de toda Europa hacen el Camino todos los años. In fact, it can get hard to find a bed in one of those “albergues”, hostels along the way. |
| Megan: Some of them let the “peregrinos” stay for free, don’t they? |
| David: Yes, they’re free. |
| Megan: Like monasteries, there’s lots of monasteries that… |
| David: Yes, but you know, even in schools which are closed in the summer, and other public houses or buildings. |
| Megan: I want to do it, sometime. Okay! So, you said the Milky Way, which in Spanish is: |
| David: “La Vía Láctea”. |
| Megan: So, “la Vía Láctea” is also called “el Camino de Santiago”, too? |
| David: Yes, it seems to be oriented in the way to Santiago, and I’ve heard that pilgrims used these stars, which are our galaxy, to get oriented and guided. |
| Megan: It’s like the way it’s written in the sky then, which takes us to the horoscope. How do you say horoscope in Spanish? |
| David: Very similar. We say “horóscopo”. |
| Megan: And do you believe in horoscope? |
| David: No, I don’t. But it’s funny to read now and then what the papers say about your future. |
| Megan: Right! They keep it nice and general, so you can always see a little truth in it. By the way, what do you call the astrological signs in Spanish? |
| David: Okay! We start with “Aries”. |
| Megan: Which is “Aries. “ |
| David: “Tauro”. |
| Megan: “Taurus.” |
| David: “Géminis”. |
| Megan: “Gemini.” |
| David: “Cáncer”. |
| Megan: “Cancer.” |
| David: “Leo”. |
| Megan: “Leo.” |
| David: “Virgo”. |
| Megan: “Virgo.” |
| David: “Libra”. |
| Megan: “Libra.” |
| David: “Escorpio”. |
| Megan: “Scorpio.” |
| David: “Sagitario”. |
| Megan: “Sagittarius.” |
| David: “Capricornio”. |
| Megan: “Capricorn.” |
| David: “Acuario”. |
| Megan: “Aquarius.” |
| David: Y “Piscis”. |
| Megan: And “Pisces.” |
| David: That’s it! |
| Megan: Okay! There’s one constellation that I know you have a different name for here in Spain than we do, and that’s the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. What do you, guys, call it? |
| David: We call them “Osa Mayor” and “Osa Menor”. |
| Megan: The Big Bear and the Little Bear, which I think comes from Latin, it’s “Ursa Mayor” or something like that. |
| David: Yes, that’s right. And it’s “osa”, it’s a feminine. |
| Megan: The feminine because it’s the mother bear and the baby bears in it. |
Outro |
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| David: So, I’m afraid that we have run out of time for today. ¡Hasta la próxima! |
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