Learn common adverbs of frequency used for daily habits
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| ¡Hola! ¿Que tal, como estas? |
| Hello! My name is Brenda Romaniello, and I’m your Spanish teacher. |
| Today, we’re going to have a look at some common adverbs of frequency to talk about daily routines in Spanish. |
| We’re going to start with some vocabulary, sí. Vocabulario para adverbios de frecuencia. |
| So, we’re going to have a look at some adverbs of frequency that we can use in Spanish to talk about the frequency with which we do things, activities, everyday activities in Spanish. |
| ¿Estas listo? |
| Are you ready? |
| Let’s get to it! |
| So, the first one that we have here and I want you to repeat after me so we practice pronunciation is todos los días. |
| Todos los días |
| Todos los días |
| So that means “every day,” yes. |
| “Every day” or “every single day,” todos los días. |
| And as you can see, in terms of frequency, yes, we can see that we do it every day, all the time, okay? So that’s why it is the most frequent of the adverbs that we’re going to have a look into today. |
| Let’s have a look at the next one. |
| Normalmente |
| Normalmente |
| Normalmente |
| And that means “usually,” yes. |
| Usually, normally, and as you can see, its’ less often than todos los dias, but it’s still very high, still pretty frequent when we do this activity. |
| Normalmente |
| The next one is a menudo. |
| A menudo |
| A menudo |
| Sí, as you can see here, there’s two words here, okay. So, this is separated, a menudo, but pay attention that when we say it in Spanish, it sounds- it‘s going to sound like one word, and that’s because we have this vowel here and then we start with an M, which is a consonant. So, this will very likely sound more like a menudo, a menudo, okay, but there’s two words here. And that means “often.” |
| A menudo “often” |
| And you can see, it’s slightly less often than normalmente and todos los dias, but it’s still pretty good, let’s say, frequency. It’s still pretty out there. We still do it pretty often, yes, a menudo. |
| A menudo |
| The next one, a veces. |
| A veces |
| A veces |
| And a veces significa, it means “sometimes,” yes, sometimes. And again, we have two- there’s a space in between these two letters, these two words, a veces, but when we say it in Spanish very quickly, we’ll say a veces, a veces. |
| And as you can see here, we are not doing it. It’s fairly less than 50% of the time. In terms of frequency, it would be 50%, less than 50% of the time, yes, sometimes. |
| The next one is rara vez. |
| Rara vez |
| And now we have this /rrr/ sound at the beginning. Just try to pronounce it, if you’re not very comfortable with rolling your Rs, it’s okay. The more that you practice, even the harder you try, we Spanish speakers will understand that you’re trying to make this sound, rara vez. |
| Rara vez |
| And that means “seldom, not very often, rarely,” okay? |
| Rara vez |
| And as you can see, the frequency for this word is not often, okay? It’s “rarely” or “seldom.” |
| And the last one that we want to have a look into today is nunca. |
| Nunca |
| Nunca |
| Nunca significa “never” and in the frequency, it’s basically not there. We never do this, okay? So, the frequency is zero percent of the time, okay? |
| Muy bien, vamos a repetir. |
| Todos los días |
| Normalmente |
| A menudo |
| A veces |
| Rara vez |
| Nunca |
| Perfecto! |
| Now, let’s have a look at some dialogues, yes. We’re gonna have, for example, two neighbours are talking, yes, and they have this conversation. |
| Desayunas? |
| Desayunas? |
| Sí, pero nunca cocino. |
| Sí, pero nunca cocino. |
| Desayunas? |
| Sí, pero nunca cocino. |
| So, “Do you eat breakfast?” |
| “Yes, but I never cook.” |
| As you can see here, we say sí, pero nunca cocino. |
| Nunca cocino “I never cook” |
| Okay, you can see there the adverb of frequency in this particular example, okay, in this dialogue. |
| Talking about examples, let’s go and have a look at some more examples of when we can put into practice these adverbs of frequency in Spanish. Let’s have a look at the following examples. |
| Normalmente bebo café. |
| Normalmente bebo café. |
| “I usually drink coffee.” |
| Normalmente, sí, we say how often is that? It’s pretty often, okay, normalmente. |
| “I usually drink coffee.” |
| La siguiente, “the next one.” |
| A menudo veo televisión. |
| Veo |
| A menudo veo televisión. |
| “I often watch television.” |
| Okay. |
| A menudo |
| How often is a menudo? Let’s have a look at our charting then. It’s pretty often. Yes, it’s often. |
| “I often watch television.” |
| And the last one, the last example that we have here: |
| A veces escucho música. |
| Escucho |
| A veces escucho música. |
| A veces |
| A veces |
| So, “I sometimes listen to music.” |
| “I sometimes listen to music.” |
| Muy bien. ¡Perfecto! Very good job! |
| So, let’s have a look at what structure we are using here. As you can see, we have the adverb of frequency first and then we’re gonna have the verb or the phrase that we want to- the daily activity that we want to describe, okay? |
| So, our daily habits, sí. |
| bebo café |
| veo televisión |
| escucho música |
| So, the structure, the structure is going to be the [adverb of frequency] plus [the verb phrase], okay? So, first, we put the adverb of frequency here. |
| So, for example, if we want to say, here, we’re saying normalmente bebo café, sí. |
| Normalmente bebo café. |
| “I usually drink coffee.” |
| How would you say, “I never drink coffee”? |
| “I never drink coffee.” |
| Well, as you can see here, we say, “I never cook,” we say nunca cocino. So here, instead of saying normalmente, we would say nunca. |
| Nunca bebo café. |
| “I never drink coffee.” |
| And so on and so forth. |
| So, you have the daily habits or activities here and then you can change the adverb of frequency, the Spanish adverb of frequency to change or to describe the frequency, the frequency with which you do these activities. |
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