Dialogue

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Lizzie: Buenos días, mi nombre es Lizzie.
Allan: Allan here.
Lizzie: Beginner Series, Lesson number 13.
Allan: Mathematics 1 - Addition. Hi everyone, and welcome back to SpanishPod101.com. I am here with Lizzie in Lima, Peru, on the Pacific Coast of South America.
Lizzie: ¿Cómo estan? Chicos, chicas, señoras, señores, estudiantes de SpanishPod101.com. Es un placer saludarlos otra vez.
Allan: Lizzie, we are going to go in a slightly different direction today.
Lizzie: What’s that, Allan?
Allan: Today, we are beginning an explanation of mathematics.
Lizzie: Mathematics? I thought this was a language course.
Allan: It is Lizzie, of course, but mathematics is a good springboard for the topics that need to be covered. Trust me, I am a professional.
Lizzie: Ok, whatever you say.
Allan: Friends, we’ve been looking at the future tense and comparing it to the present.
Lizzie: And today?
Allan: Well, today we’re going to shift gears and have our first look at numbers and addition.
Lizzie: Where does our conversation take place today?
Allan: Well, this conversation takes place in an elementary school classroom where Professor Puga asks Mariana and Eduardo some addition questions.
Lizzie: Now, we are not your teachers in that sense, but do your homework by going to the Learning Center at SpanishPod101.com.
Allan: Hey, that’s a good plug, Lizzie.
Lizzie: Gracias!
Allan: Ok, friends, let’s get into today’s conversation.
DIALOGUE
PROFESOR PUGA: Mariana, ¿Cuánto son cuatro más tres?
MARIANA: Cuatro más tres son siete.
PROFESOR PUGA: Muy bien, Mariana. Ahora, Eduardo, ¿Cuánto son nueve más uno?
EDUARDO: Nueve más uno son diez.
PREFESSOR PUGA: ¡Bien hecho! Parece que ustedes saben sumar.
PROFESOR PUGA: Mariana, how much is four plus three?
MARIANA: Four plus three equals seven.
PROFESOR PUGA: Very good, Mariana. Now, Eduardo, how much is nine plus one?
EDUARDO: Nine plus one equals ten.
PREFESSOR PUGA: Well done! It seems that you all know how to add.
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Allan: Hey, Lizzie, you know this topic about education, it fascinates me because education system in Peru I found to be so different than the education system back home.
Lizzie: Por ejemplo…
Allan: Well, for example, here you only have a portion of the people studying in national schools. I mean it’s a majority, it’s probably 60 or 70 percent, but you have a really big group of young kids who are studying in private schools, either religious or lay schools.
Lizzie: That’s right, Allan.
Allan: And another big difference, Lizzie, is the range of education quality. You can get some world class schools here, elementary schools, secondary schools, but others really, unfortunately, aren’t very good at all.
Lizzie: Se está tratando de mejorar la educación, aquí en Perú, Allan. incluso se está evaluando al personal, profesores, de manera muy exigente. Y también se está dotando computadoras a todos los pequeños.
Allan: That’s right. So, Lizzie’s pointing out that there are some issues obviously with the national school system here, but this latest government seems to be doing a lot of moves in the right direction. They begin to evaluate all the teachers and there’s a project now to bring laptops into the classrooms, and that’s a really big step ahead. Now, let’s take a look at the vocabulary and phrases for this lesson. First…
VOCAB LIST
Lizzie: más
Allan: More, plus, or the plus sign.
Lizzie: más, más
Allan: Ok, next we’ll hear…
Lizzie: saber
Allan: To know, to know how.
Lizzie: saber, saber
Allan: Ok, let’s go to…
Lizzie: cuánto, cuánta
Allan: How much, how many.
Lizzie: cuánto, cuánta. cuánto, cuánta
Allan: Good. Now, let’s hear…
Lizzie: parecer
Allan: To seem.
Lizzie: parecer, parecer
Allan: Ok, let’s hear…
Lizzie: sumar
Allan: To add.
Lizzie: sumar, sumar
Allan: Ok, last but not least…
Lizzie: bien hecho
Allan: Well done.
Lizzie: bien hecho, bien hecho
Allan: ¿Lizzie, aquí hay una palabra que te llama más la atención, que te gusta más?
Lizzie: Sí, definitivamente. Es, bien hecho.
Allan: bien hecho Well done. So, I’ve asked Lizzie if there is a word on the list that she likes better than others. And she said she really likes the expression. bien hecho. ¿Y por qué?
Lizzie: Porque te da lugar a expresar tu emotividad, tus ganas de decir las cosas cuando algo está realmente bien hecho.
Allan: Ok, so it’s one of those words where you can really put a lot of emotion into. Lizzie, danos un par de ejemplos de cómo se puede usar bien hecho.
Lizzie: bien hecho, bien hecho
Allan: Wow, it’s lots of emotion. Ok. Let’s have a look at the usage of some of the words.
VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE
Lizzie: The first word we will look at is más.
Allan: I’m sorry. Didn’t we look at más in Newbie Lesson 12, as well as in Beginner Lessons 10 and 12?
Lizzie: Yes, you’re right. You remember correctly. But we’re using it differently here.
Allan: How so?
Lizzie: Here we’re using it for mathematics.
Allan: Ok. Example, please.
Lizzie: Dos más dos son cuatro.
Allan: Two plus two equals four.
Lizzie: Up until now we’ve studied it as a comparative adverb where it means “more”. Here it’s used as a preposition that means “plus”. This brings me back to school.
Allan: So, tell me, Lizzie, how was it growing up in school here in Peru?
Lizzie: Mmm yo me eduque en un colegio de monjitas, se llama, porque hasta ahora sigue, Inmaculada Concepción. Y habia bastante disciplina, organización y muy buena educación.
Allan: Ok, Lizzie says that she went to a Catholic school, so she was educated by nuns and was called ‘The Immaculate Conception’.
Lizzie: Yes.
Allan: And it gave her a lot of discipline and what else, Lizzie?
Lizzie: Organization and very good education.
Allan: Very good. Now Catholics, well there are a lot of Catholic schools here in Peru. And again, I’m coming from Canada, we don’t have many Catholic schools there. So, that was a very big difference in Peru. But there are certainly some great, great Catholic schools in operation and Lizzie mentions one of them. Really a fantastic school.
Lizzie: And so what’s our next word for the day?
Allan: Well, the next word we’re going to look at today is saber.
Lizzie: Angela sabe de la reunión.
Allan: Angela knows about the reunion.
Lizzie: The verb saber means “to know”.
Allan: How do we distinguish that from the verb conocer, Lizzie?
Lizzie: It’s distinguished from the verb conocer in that the latter refers to “getting to know” that is to “meeting and being familiar with”.
Allan: Right. While the conocer refers to the “knowledge of something”.
Lizzie: A person who is sabio is “knowing”.
Allan: That’s right. We can make the connection via the English word “sapience”, which means “wisdom”.
Lizzie: Wow. That’s a pretty deep comparison.
Allan: Well, I’m a pretty deep person sometimes. Ok, guys, the next vocabulary word is: cuánto. Liz, can you help us out with an example, please?
Lizzie: ¿Cuánto son? Siete más dos?[*]
Allan: How much is seven plus two?
Lizzie: The word cuánto means “how much”.
Allan: But here it’s used as an interrogative adverb.
Lizzie: But in other cases it can be used as a determining pronoun, an exclamatory adverb, and a masculine noun .
Allan: That’s right. We can connect the Spanish and the English here through the word cuánto, which means “quantity”, “amount” and “portion”.
Lizzie: We use cuánto for both “how much” and “how many”. Next stop is parecer.
Allan: As in…
Lizzie: La comida parece rica.
Allan: The food seems delicious.
Lizzie: Or “The food looks delicious”.
Allan: Right. The verb parecer can be translated as “to seem”, and “to look” or “to look like”.
Lizzie: This verb is useful for describing suspicion.
Allan: Here parece is in the third person singular of the present indicative and la comida the subject is feminine and singular. Ok, last thing we have is a phrase which is bien hecho.
Lizzie: El trabajo está bien hecho.
Allan: Right. The work is well done. Lizzie, how can we translate this expression that you like so much, bien hecho?
Lizzie: The expression bien hecho means “well done” or “well made”. The word hecho is a past participle of the verb hacer, which means “to do” or “to make”.
Allan: Here, hecho works as an adjective. And this means that its endings will be OE in the singular OS and ES in the plural.
Lizzie: Allan, what was the last food that you had that was really well made? Again, food.
Allan: Again, food, Lizzie, but…
Lizzie: Tu tema favorito, creo.
Allan: Well, we’re in Lima here, you know the food is wonderful and Lizzie, maybe our listeners don’t know that we have a very large Chinese population here in Peru.
Lizzie: That’s right.
Allan: Aha. And the Chinese have left their mark on the Peruvian cuisine. They’ve adapted local ingredients with recipes from back in China. And I can tell, Lizzie, last night I had a wonton soup that was absolutely delicious.
Lizzie: Que rico. Chifas. Debo confesar que el chifa me encanta.
Allan: That’s right. She used the word chifa. Here, in Peru, we refer to Chinese restaurants as chifas and in fact that’s an extraction of the word chao fan, which is “fried rice”. Anyway, an explanation for everything here at SpanishPod101.com. Hey, Lizzie, you know what’s well made?
Lizzie: What?
Allan: The grammar in today’s lesson.
--

Lesson focus

Lizzie: Ok. Today we’re going to look at the interrogative adverb cuánto, which means “how much” and “how many”.
Allan: Right. The word cuánto can also be used as an exclamatory adverb as in ¡cuanto he viajado!.
Lizzie: Oh, how much I have travelled.
Allan: And as a determining pronoun as in ¿Cuantos compraste?
Lizzie: Which means “How many did you buy?”
Allan: But for now we want to focus on the interrogative adverb.
Lizzie: Let’s go back to where we saw this in the conversation. ¿Cuánto son cuatro más tres?
Allan: How much is four plus three?
Lizzie: We translate cuánto as “how much”, but let’s take a closer look at what’s going on in Spanish.
Allan: This interrogative adverb has an ending that shows its number, that is whether singular or plural, and its gender, whether it’s masculine or feminine.
Lizzie: This works just like lots of the nouns and adjectives that we see. For example, in the singular the masculine form you saw cuánto and the feminine is cuánta, and in the plural the masculine is OS cuántos and the feminine is AS cuántas.
Allan: Now, we can see that cuántos, as used in the conversation, is masculine and plural.
Lizzie: That’s because it’s referring to los números, the numbers.
Allan: In this way, the question seems to be asking “how many are six plus four?” where we mean “How many are six units plus four units?”
Lizzie: With this question, the masculine plural form is used, but in other cases it’s not.
Allan: Lizzie, I think an example of this would help our audience tremendously. It’s a little confusing.
Lizzie: ¿Cuántas playas hay en Colombia?
Allan: How many beaches are there in Columbia?
Lizzie: In this case, we see that cuántas is in the feminine plural, which is in agreement with playas, also feminine and plural.
Allan: You can see how important it is to know the number and gender.
Lizzie: Let’s look at another example where the adverb takes yet another form.
Allan: Like…
Lizzie: ¿Cuánto dinero necesitas?
Allan: How much money do you need?
Lizzie: This time the word cuanto is in the masculine singular. You can also see that the noun dinero is likewise in the masculine singular.
Allan: Again, these elements are in agreement. Wow, our first mathematics lesson over and done.
Lizzie: It really did bring me back to school.

Outro

Allan: Well, regardless of your feelings about Math, this lesson went above and beyond.
Lizzie: I think so, Allan. Que te vaya bien.
Allan: Have a good one, friends. Bye-bye.
Lizzie: Bye. Chao!

Grammar

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