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| INTRODUCTION |
| Megan: ¡Bienvenidos a Spanishpod101.com! |
| David: ¡Buenos días! Soy David. |
| Megan: And I’m Megan. Iberian Spanish Series, Lesson 27 “A boyfriend is a problem, but not a deal breaker.” Okay! Well, last week we were on a street and a poor woman was getting harassed by “obreros” and she told them off and this week we get to hear José get turned down big time by Carmen. |
| David: ¡Pobre! So, I’m sure we’ll have to talk about the huge regional differences in Spain. |
| Megan: Definitely. And before I forget, this lesson references Newbie Lesson 27 “I can’t love you!”, so be sure to check that on the website. |
| Megan: Let’s go back to Newbie Lesson 27 where we heard the following conversation: |
| DIALOGUE |
| RAMÓN: ¿Por qué nunca me das la oportunidad de mostrarte el amor que tengo por ti? |
| ELIANA: ¡Ramón, no te puedo amar! |
| RAMÓN: ¡No puede ser! ¡Mi vida! ¡No...! ¿¡Por qué!? |
| ELIANA: Porque amo a Ernesto. |
| RAMÓN: ¡Ese desgraciado! ¿¡Cómo vas a decirme eso!? |
| ELIANA: ¡Ay, Ramón, no hagas eso! |
| M3: And now with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| RAMÓN: ¿Por qué nunca me das la oportunidad de mostrarte el amor que tengo por ti? |
| M3: “Why don’t you ever give me a chance to show you the love I have for you?” |
| ELIANA: ¡Ramón, no te puedo amar! |
| F3: “Ramon, I can’t love you!” |
| RAMÓN: ¡No puede ser! ¡Mi vida! ¡No...! ¿¡Por qué!? |
| M3: “Impossible, my love! No! Why?” |
| ELIANA: Porque amo a Ernesto. |
| F3: “Because I love Ernesto.” |
| RAMÓN: ¡Ese desgraciado! ¿¡Cómo vas a decirme eso!? |
| M3: “That scum! How are you going to say that to me?” |
| ELIANA: ¡Ay, Ramón, no hagas eso! |
| F3: “Oh, Ramon, don’t do that!” |
| David: ¡Vaya culebrón! |
| Megan: Yes. A “culebrón” is a telenovela or a soap-opera. Ramon sounds pretty “desesperado”, don’t you think? |
| David: Yes, very much. I think he gets even a bit aggressive, don’t you think so? |
| Megan: Yes, I think so. He’s definitely not happy. Well, let’s see if our Iberian guy José has better luck with Carmen though if it turns out like the opera, pobrecito, a ver… |
| David: Carmen, tú sabes que yo siempre te he querido. |
| Megan: José, por favor, no sigas. ¡Yo no te puedo querer! Sabes que tengo novio. |
| David: Bueno, un novio molesta pero no impide. |
| Megan: ¡Ay, déjame! Y acepta de una vez que yo a quien quiero es a Pablo. |
| M3: And now slower. Una vez más, esta vez lentamente. |
| David: Carmen, tú sabes que yo siempre te he querido. |
| Megan: José, por favor, no sigas. ¡Yo no te puedo querer! Sabes que tengo novio. |
| David: Bueno, un novio molesta pero no impide. |
| Megan: ¡Ay, déjame! Y acepta de una vez que yo a quien quiero es a Pablo. |
| M3: And now with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| David: “Carmen, tú sabes que yo siempre te he querido.” - “Carmen, you know I have always loved you.” |
| Megan: “José, por favor, no sigas. ¡Yo no te puedo querer! Sabes que tengo novio.” - “Jose, please, don’t go on! I can’t love you! You know I have a boyfriend.” |
| David: “Bueno, un novio molesta pero no impide.” - “Well, a boyfriend is a problem, but it’s not a deal breaker.” |
| Megan: “¡Ay, déjame! Y acepta de una vez que yo a quien quiero es a Pablo.” - “Oh, leave me alone and accept once and for all that Pablo is the one I love!” |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Megan: Okay! I love these lessons. ¡Qué fuerte! |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: Lots and lots of foreigners come to Spain and end up staying because they fall in love and there’re definitely a lot of cultural differences that can make it tricky, don’t you think? |
| David: Yes. And how do you think Spanish relationships are different? |
| Megan: I don’t know. I might get into trouble if I stereotype, so I’ll let you do it. What do you think? Put you on the spot. David is thinking. What about, what do you think about jealousy? Think that Spanish couples are a little bit more… |
| David: Are more jealous? Well, I think not now. You know, maybe some years ago we could be a bit more jealous, but I think that young people now is more relaxed in this. |
| Megan: They’re more relaxed, they’re moving beyond that “envidia” or… Okay! Well, do you, what do you think about our dialogue? Do you think that José is going to take no for an answer here? |
| David: Yes, I think so. Yes, he’s going to try harder, but you know, she will say, well, you know, maybe Carmen will say “Okay, let’s try!”. But I think José will be fair along. |
| Megan: Yes. Well, maybe he’s not really looking for a relationship, he just wants to be an “amigo con derecho a roce”. What do you think? |
| David: Right. How would you say “amigo con derecho a roce” in English? |
| Megan: Well, literally it means, literally I would translate it as a friend with the right to “rozar” which means to brush up against somebody, but we call it “friends with benefits”. |
| David: Okay! So, listeners, where else are you going to learn this stuff? |
| Megan: Yes, right! Well, hombre, language happens in the real world, not a textbook, right? |
| David: Great! |
| Megan: Okay! Well, let’s get into the lesson. I think this is one case where almost everything in the Newbie Lesson could be said here, at least grammatically speaking, don’t you think? |
| David: Yes, I think so. |
| Megan: But there’s one thing. What about the verb “amar”? It seems like in Spain you tend to use “querer” more when you’re talking about “to love someone”. |
| David: Yes, much more. You know, you can always say “amar” and you will be understood, but when we’re talking that we love someone we usually use the verb “querer”. |
| Megan: “Te quiero” instead of “te amo”. |
| David: “Te amo”, yes, “te amo” sounds more like a soap-opera hour. |
| Megan: Yes, more melodramatic or… |
| David: Yes. But when you want to say someone that you love that person, you say “I love you!”, you say “¡Te quiero!”. |
| Megan: “¡Te quiero!”. |
| David: Right. |
| Megan: Okay! And one thing I notice that I thought was interesting was that in the Iberian version we see a lot of the personal pronouns that we always say you don’t see like for example in the Newbie dialogue they said: |
| F2: Ramón, ¡no te puedo amar! |
| F3: “Ramon, I can’t love you!” |
| Megan: And in our version, José said: |
| David: “Carmen, tú sabes que yo siempre te he querido”. |
| Megan: And then Carmen says “¡yo no te puedo querer!” and she also says “yo a quien quiero es a Pablo”. Try to explain to us why are they using “yo” and “tú” so much here, when normally you wouldn’t? |
| David: Yes, you know, you wouldn’t normally because you know and we all know that when you’re saying a verb in Spanish because it’s a conjugated form you always know which is the subject for that. |
| Megan: So, when you hear “quiero” you know it’s the first person. |
| David: It’s “I”, so it’s “yo quiero”. You usually use these subjects and these pronouns even if you don’t have to when you want to emphasize something, so you’re saying “yo” and “tú” because you are talking about your feelings and you want to emphasize those feelings. |
| Megan: It sounds much stronger when you say that. So, it’s kind of how we put a lot of emphasis on the words, you say “I’m the one!” and so she’s saying “I can’t love you!” and “The one I love is Pablo”, right? |
| David: Right! |
| Megan: So, she’s like… |
| David: That’s why. |
| Megan: Really emotionally charged, right, to convince him that this is the case. And what about the construction “Siempre te he querido”? This is a way of forming the Past Tense with the verb “haber” plus the Past Participle. And this is something you hear a lot in Spain, but I think in this case you would hear it in Spain or Latin America because it translates more or less the same into English, too. “I have always loved you.” |
| David: Right. |
| Megan: And so, you wouldn’t say “siempre te quise”. |
| David: Well, not really. You know, you would say “siempre te quise” when you are talking about the feeling that you are not feeling anymore, so “siempre te he querido” would mean that “I have loved you for a long time, but I still love you.” |
| Megan: Still do and so. |
| David: Yes, and if you say “siempre te quise”, maybe you’re talking… |
| Megan: ¡Pero ahora no! |
| David: Not anymore, right. |
| Megan: ¡Ya no! Okay! That’s good to know, those are such subtle things that I think, you know, as a foreigner you just have to hear them over and over to realize, and sometimes it just can “se escapa”, no? |
| David: You know, we have always talked about Galicia, for example, which is that region in the North-West part of Spain, and they speak Spanish in their own way. |
| Megan: Right. |
| David: You know, they wouldn’t say “siempre te he querido”. |
| Megan: That’s right. |
| David: They don’t usually say, use this Present Perfect. They wouldn’t use this tense. They would use “siempre te quise”. |
| Megan: “Siempre te quise”, right! Because they don’t ever use that “haber” plus. I know that because I have a friend who is “gallega” and my other friends are always making fun of her. |
| David: Right. |
| Megan: Because she says it that way, but for her, it’s totally normal and so. |
| David: Right. And just one more issue. You know, the right name for José is José, you know, it’s the last syllable that it’s very common that you hear “Jose”. |
| Megan: “Jose”. Right. Because it has the tilde, the accent on the “E”, “José”. But you do , you hear in Spain, I don’t know if they do that in Latin America, but you hear “Jose” all the time. |
| David: Yes, maybe it’s easier, I don’t know. |
| Megan: It’s interesting. Okay! So, basically, just to wrap up, the personal pronouns like “yo” and “tú”, when you hear those, you know that you’re hearing something that’s very strong, that someone is trying to emphasize what they’re telling you and you should listen up. If someone says “yo” to you and “tú”, you know that they’re trying to really impress something upon you. |
| David: And you have to pay attention. |
| Megan: Okay! Now we get into a few expressions. How about this expression, this is another strong one, “De una vez”. When somebody tells you that, you know you’re in trouble usually, right? |
| David: Yes. It sounds very strong. Right! Yes. |
| Megan: Right! So, someone says “Hazlo de una vez”. |
| David: Right. |
| Megan: You know… |
| David: That means that, yes. |
| Megan: “Do it already, will you?”, you know, like this is it. |
| David: Exactly! Exactamente. |
| Megan: Okay! And this is more in the realm of grammar, but I don’t think we ever talked about it and it comes up here. When a person is a direct object, like for example, “I love Pablo”, Pablo is the direct object in this sentence. And in Spanish something interesting happens when a person, only a person is a direct object, right? |
| David: Right. And like English and other Romans languages, we always use the pronoun “a” before a person that is “complemento directo”. |
| Megan: Right! A “complemento directo” is a direct object. And give us some examples of this. |
| David: Yes, like in the Newbie dialogue: |
| F2: “Porque amo a Ernesto”. |
| F3: “Because I love Ernesto.” |
| Megan: So, it would sound wrong if somebody said “Porque amo Ernesto”. |
| David: Yes, it’s… |
| Megan: That sounds weird, doesn’t it? |
| David: Yes, it’s a mistake. |
| Megan: To me it sounds okay. I mean I know it’s not supposed to be like that but, mean I while, you know. Okay! And let’s lead up to one of the more complicated examples in our dialogue. “Yo a quien quiero es a Pablo”. |
| David: Yes. This is a bit more complicated. Can you translate it literally? |
| Megan: Okay! “Me to whom I love is to Pablo.” which sounds crazy. We wouldn’t say it that way. “The one I love is Pablo.” |
| David: Right! And we say “Yo a quien quiero es a Pablo”. |
| Megan: So, would you ever say “Quien quiero es Pablo”? |
| David: No, never. |
| Megan: No, sounds bad. |
| David: Yes, very bad. |
| Megan: And how about “El que quiero es Pablo”? |
| David: No. |
| Megan: Tampoco. No. It has to be “Yo a quien quiero es Pablo”. |
| David: You know, you could say “Yo quiero a Pablo”. |
| Megan: “Yo quiero a Pablo”. |
| David: Yes, but you know we are saying “Yo a quien quiero es a Pablo” which is very, very emphasized. |
| Megan: Truly emphasized. |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: It’s not you, it’s him, right? |
| David: Yes. |
| Megan: This is what she’s basically saying. Okay! I think maybe we will look at this once and more in this week’s grammar point, because it’s kind of tricky and it’s something that we English speakers really have to practice to not leave out that “a”, because otherwise it just sounds strange, doesn’t it? |
| David: Right. |
| Megan: And we make that mistake a lot, don’t we? |
| David: Okay, Megan. And do listeners know where to find the grammar point? |
| Megan: Now, that’s a good question. I don’t know, do you? Listeners, hey, there’s a lot of extra info about this lesson and all the lessons in the PDF at Spanishpod101.com. Check that out just to get in a little bit deeper. Okay! One last thing for you, David. Do Spanish girls pull that typical line with guys that they don’t want to date “Can we just be friends?”? |
| David: Yes, I know. |
| Megan: ¿Cómo se dice en español? |
| David: “Podemos ser amigos” o “Si yo te quiero como a un amigo”. |
| Megan: “I like you like a friend.” |
| David: Yes, and you know, that’s very painful. |
| Megan: Very painful. Are you having bad memories right now? |
| David: Yes, I’m thinking about when I heard this phrase, and yes, it’s very, very painful. |
| Megan: Yes. Well, I guess some things are universal, aren’t they? |
Outro |
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| David: Yes. Okay! So, there will be plenty of other lessons for us to “profundizar” all this. |
| Megan: “Profundizar” which means “to get in deeper”. ¡Hasta la próxima! |
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