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| INTRODUCTION |
| Megan: ¡Bienvenidos a Spanishpod101.com! |
| David: ¡Buenos días! Soy David. |
| Megan: And I’m Megan. Iberian Spanish Series, Lesson 25. |
| David: “¿Podría hablar más despacio?” |
| Today’s lesson references Newbie Lesson 25 – “Can you speak slower, please?” |
| Megan: Also in this lesson we’ll look at the verb “poder” in the Conditional Tense for asking politely, trying to get someone to do something for you politely, basically. |
| Megan: Okay! To get started we’re going to go back to Newbie Lesson 25 where we heard the following conversation: |
| DIALOGUE |
| YMA: Ahora, continuamos con el altar. |
| MARISSA: ¿Puede usted hablar más despacio, por favor? |
| YMA: ¡Claro! ¿Hablo muy rápido para ustedes? |
| LUKE: Sí. Queremos escuchar cada cosa. ¡Es muy interesante! |
| M3: This time with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| YMA: Ahora, continuamos con el altar. |
| F4: “Now we continue with the altar.” |
| MARISSA: ¿Puede usted hablar más despacio, por favor? |
| F5: “Madam, can you speak slower, please?” |
| YMA: ¡Claro! ¿Hablo muy rápido para ustedes? |
| F3: “Of course! Do I speak very fast for you all?” |
| LUKE: Sí. Queremos escuchar cada cosa. ¡Es muy interesante! |
| M3: “Yes, we want to listen to everything. It’s very interesting!” |
| Megan: And now let’s hear how we can say that in Iberian, but very polite Iberian Spanish. Here we go: |
| David: Hasta este momento, ¿tienen alguna duda? |
| Megan: Disculpe, ¿pero podría hablar más despacio? |
| David: ¡Por supuesto! Lo siento. ¿Le parece bien así? |
| Megan: ¡Perfecto! ¿Podría repetir la última diapositiva? Es que no lo he cogido todo. |
| M3: And now slower. Una vez más, esta vez lentamente. |
| David: Hasta este momento, ¿tienen alguna duda? |
| Megan: Disculpe, ¿pero podría hablar más despacio? |
| David: ¡Por supuesto! Lo siento. ¿Le parece bien así? |
| Megan: ¡Perfecto! ¿Podría repetir la última diapositiva? Es que no lo he cogido todo. |
| M3: And now with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| David: “Hasta este momento, ¿tienen alguna duda?” - “Are there any questions so far?” |
| Megan: “Disculpe, ¿pero podría hablar más despacio?” - “Excuse me, but could you speak more slowly?” |
| David: “¡Por supuesto! Lo siento. ¿Le parece bien así?” - “Of course, I apologize. How is this?” |
| Megan: “¡Perfecto! ¿Podría repetir la última diapositiva? Es que no lo he cogido todo.” - “Perfect. Could you repeat the last line? I wasn’t able to catch everything.” |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Megan: Okay! Let’s dig into this week’s dialogue. We’re going to focus on this first part about pronunciation. We have three or four things that we want to review that we’ve probably already seen in other lessons, but I think are worth repeating. And the first is that hard sound that we have in word “cogido”. |
| David: Okay, yes! Remember this is a strong sound and you may need some practice to get it. Let’s go! “Cogido”, “cogido”. |
| Megan: Good! So, it’s, this is the sound that “G” or the “J” makes, I think in Latin America would just be a simple, more simple “H” sound like “cohido”, if I’m not wrong. |
| David: Yes, I think it would be more, you know, softer or… |
| Megan: But here it’s, David, it’s not exaggerating. It’s really pronounced like that. |
| David: No, it’s so strong. |
| Megan: “Cogido”. |
| David: Yes, “cogido”. Right! |
| Megan: Okay! And we have another word like we did a few lessons back with the “CT” sound, which really doesn’t cause many problems for English speakers because we can say “perfect” and that doesn’t cause any problems for us, and in this lesson it’s “perfecto”, but some Spanish speakers actually do have a problem with that in reduce the sound. |
| David: Yes, maybe. Do you remember we learned that people from Galicia which is an area region in the North-West of Spain, you know, they have their own language which is “gallego”, “galician” or “galego” as they would say. And you know, the way they speak their language gets reflected or affects in any way the way they speak Spanish. If you go there, to Galicia, you would probably hear something like “perfeto”. |
| Megan: “Perfeto”. And a lot of tourists do or as students go to Santiago de Compostela to study they would probably hear all their “compañeros” saying that when they… |
| David: Something like “perfeto” or “correto” and, you know, they are saying “perfecto” and “correcto”. |
| Megan: Okay! And the other thing that I wanted to get into and I feel like our listeners are probably “muy listos” and I don’t even have to tell them this I hope, but in Spanish the “H” is silent and I actually recently heard somebody who’d been studying for an entire year here in Spain, from the United States, who said “hablar”. I was just horrified! So, “hablar”, right, David? |
| David: Right. That’s right! “Hablar”. You know, every time you see the “H” you never have to ask or, you know, you don’t have to wonder how to pronounce that, unless it’s preceded by the “C” and that occasions it would become “che”. |
| Megan: A “ch” with a “che” sound. But, we should mention that in old Spanish it was “hablar”, it was aspirated and there are some regions, you know, kind of remote regions, right? In Andalucia and Extremadura where they still do actually say “hablar”, right? |
| David: Right. You know, they pronounce the “H” in some kind of aspiration, right. |
| Megan: But it’s a soft thing, it’s like “hablar” or I don’t know exactly, I’ve heard it a few times but it’s sort of a rural thing, isn’t it? |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: And you’re going to say those… |
| David: You know, it’s in the South of Spain and Andalucia, Extremadura,... |
| Megan: And you’re going to tell us about “refrán”? |
| David: Yes, my grandmother, she’s from Extremadura and you know, she says a “refrán” or some kind of saying… |
| Megan: Like yes, a refrain or, yes, saying. |
| David: And she said something like “Quien no diga ‘hato’, ‘hacha’, ‘higuera’, no es de mi tierra”. |
| Megan: So, “Whoever doesn’t say ‘hato’ which is ‘hato’, ‘hacha’, ‘higuera’, which is ‘hato’”. David, just explain this to me, I had no idea, but it’s that little stick that has the… |
| David: Yes, you know, if you picture someone who is walking the… |
| Megan: Like a hobo, the thing that he carries over his back, the stick with the little thing tied over, that’s an “hato”. |
| David: Yes, he gets this piece of cloth and he ties these two stick. |
| Megan: And an “hacha” is an “axe” and “higuera” is “fig tree”, so… |
| David: Right. |
| Megan: All things I guess that have something to do with Extremadura, I don’t know. |
| David: Well, not really, just for the “H.” Yes, “higuera”, there are lots of “higueras” in Extremadura. |
| Megan: Fig trees. And I wanted to mention this might be interesting for people who are coming from other romance language that in Spanish lots of these words with “H” at the beginning would’ve originally had an “F” in Latin, so for example, we have words like “hablar”, which would’ve been “fablar” in Latin and I think it’s got an interesting history this word because in other romance languages it comes from “parlar” is the word, like in “catalán” it’s “parlar”, in French it’s “parler”, but in Spanish it’s “hablar” and it comes from the word “fablar” which means “to make up stories”, which I think tells you a lot about the way Spanish people talk. |
| David: Right. |
| Megan: Or I like to think of it that way. And in other words like that or “hoja”, which is “feuille” in French and “hierro”, which is from “ferro”, and then you see words like “ferrocarril” that have the “F” because they’re more “cultas”, no? |
| David: Yes, that’s right. |
| Megan: So, that all concludes for vocabulary. |
| David: Yes, but you know, here in the Spanish, which is spoken in all Spain, Castilian Spanish, the “F” has turned into an “H” and it has disappeared. But in other languages spoken in Spain, like “galician”, “galego”, this initial “F” has remained and we can find some words in “galician” which are “falar”. |
| Megan: “Falar” which is “hablar”, which is “to talk”. |
| David: Yes, right. And you know, you would say in gallego, “Eu falo galego”. |
| Megan: Which is how you say “I speak gallego.” |
| David: Right. |
| Megan: Galician. |
| David: And in the North, Asturias has its own language which is “asturiano” or “bable”. And you know, in Spanish we say “habas”, which are “beans”, and they say “fabas”. |
| Megan: “Fabas”. |
| David: Or “fabes”. |
| Megan: “Fabes”, right, which is where “fabada” comes from which I know we’ve talked that about before, so that “fabada” that it’s coming from “fabes” is what you mean. |
| David: Right. |
| Megan: Okay. |
| David: Okay. So, to move on let’s try to compare both versions, the standard version and the Iberian version. So, let’s start with the standard version. |
| F3: “¿Puede usted hablar más despacio, por favor? |
| F5: “Madam, can you speak slower, please?” |
| David: And in the Iberian version we have: “¿Podría hablar más despacio?”. What could you say about this, Megan? |
| Megan: Well, to me, in this case, and finally we can actually say this, I think the Iberian version is a little bit more polite, isn’t it? Because it’s a little less direct. |
| David: Right. Okay! So, we see here that in the standard version we use Present Tense, “puede usted”, this is Present Tense, and in the Iberian version we use the Conditional Tense, “podría hablar”. So, this “podría” is the Conditional Tense for the verb “poder”. |
| Megan: And it’s like, it’s basically the way when, in English we say “Would you mind speaking more slowly?”, using the Conditional it makes it sound more polite. I don’t know why, it just does. |
| David: Yes, that’s right! When we use the Conditional Tense it would just for Conditional clauses, something like “If I do this”, “I would like to…”, but we use this Conditional for polite situations. |
| Megan: And there’s another example of it, as well. |
| David: Yes, so we have another example in “¿Podría repetir la última diapositiva?”. |
| Megan: Right! And here is just saying “Could you repeat the last line?” instead of saying “Can you repeat?”. It’s a very subtle difference, but in English we do exactly the same thing and it just makes it seem more formal. And the other thing I wanted to say, in the Newbie version they said “Claro” and here we say: |
| David: “Por supuesto”. |
| Megan: “Por supuesto”, which is also maybe slightly more formal. |
| David: Yes, be more polite. You know, I would only say “claro” in casual situations. I wouldn’t say this if there’s a business meeting, I wouldn’t say “claro”. |
| Megan: Yes, it sounds a little “borde”, doesn’t it? |
| David: Maybe. |
| Megan: Which “borde” is like a little bit, just a little bit rude a little, but over the edge, no? |
| David: Yes, a bit rude. Maybe you won’t sound casual, but you may sound rude. |
| Megan: Okay. And the last thing I wanted to look at or these polite things that people say, we have two different ways of saying “I’m sorry!” in this one. The first one is: |
| David: “Disculpe”. |
| Megan: “Disculpe” just means “I’m sorry!”. And then we also have “lo siento”. |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: Is there a difference? |
| David: Yes, well you know, “disculpe” is the Imperative form for the second singular form. So, we are begging someone to excuse us. “Disculpe”, “Excuse me!” |
| Megan: It sounds more polite, doesn’t it? |
| David: “Excuse me!”, yes. |
| Megan: “Excuse me!”. And it’s used the form of “usted”, also, because it would be “disculpa” if it was, too. |
| David: Right, right, that’s right! This is formal for “usted”. And “lo siento” literally means “I am sorry.” |
| Megan: And then there is another way of saying which would be “perdona”, “perdone”. |
| David: Sí. Yes. |
| Megan: There’s lots of ways in Spanish to say “I’m sorry.” What would you say on the scale would be the most polite to the less polite, or the least formal way? So, “disculpe” would be the most formal. |
| David: I think it would be more formal than “lo siento”. “Perdón”, I think it’s medium, so you know, you can always use “perdón”. |
| Megan: And if you’re not being polite, you’re just not going to say anything, right? |
| David: Right. |
| Megan: Perdón. |
Outro |
|---|
| Megan: Okay! Well, I think that’s going to do it for this week’s lesson. |
| David: ¡Hasta la próxima semana! |
| Megan: ¡Nos vemos! |
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