Today’s lesson was recorded on location in Lima, Peru.

So then, ¿cómo estás tú? (how are you?). I know that “yo estoy bien”, but here you can tell me how you’re doing…

Si, yo muy bien. Estoy un poco cansado.

Yes, I just finished listening to the first lesson and as I said it sounds very scripted but the content is good. I would like to say thank you to Joseph and Beatriz for starting this podcast up. Can’t wait to see more lessons!

Beatriz, du sprichst Deutsch! Das ist prima! Ich komme aus Australien aber ich lerne Deustch in der Schule.

I once learnt Portuguese but that was a long time ago so unfortunately I can’t speak Portuguese with Joseph. Anywayz, good luck again with your new podcast.

¡Hola Max!

Disculpa que puedo habar contigo en alemán. (Sorry I can’t speak with you in German. We’ll have to leave that up to Beatriz… learning Spanish via German… could be interesting! If you want to draw some comparisons between Spanish and Portuguese, just let me know…

The “Mexican Wave” could be translated “la ola de estadio”. Here, “estadio” (stadium) indicates the kind of wave we’re referring to. Also, let me point out that there are two word in Spanish for “wave” and they have slightly different meanings: “ola”, as you know, means “wave”, as in the kind of waves that are about to break on the shoreline; the other is “onda”, which means “wave” in the scientific sense (i.e. “onda electromagnética”, electromagnetic wave). Aside from the scientific sense, “onda” is used figuratively as “vibe” or “vibration”. When Arthur Fonzarelli, that’s right, The Fonz, used to say “Ehh!”, it was translated into Spanish as “¡¿Qué onda?!”

hola
felicitaciones por el lanzamiento , les deseo mucha suerte
hasta luego

Hola a todos! Enhorabuena!
Estoy muy satisfecho con el lanzamiento de Spanishpod101.com !!
Soy de Corea, y he comenzado aprender espanol hace tres meses.
Espero practicar hablar en espanol con todos, aprendiendo de lecciones interesantes de Spanishpod101.com
Gracias!!

¡Hola a todos!

¿Cómo les va? Todo bien por acá. Muchísimas gracias por los buenos deseos y saludos. Estamos muy emocionados de poderles ofrecer un curso atractivo y sobre todo útil para que todos podamos aprender y mejor nuestro castellano. Ha sido un día monumental para nosotros, ya que hemos tenido mucha preparación para llegar al día de hoy. Esperamos cultivar su interés en el idioma y apoyarles con sus estudios, tanto con los comentarios y el foro como con el desarollo del curso en general. Agracedemos su participación y que sepan que nos ha sido un gusto el haber lanzado el curso y recibido sus palabras animadoras.

Muchos saludos a todos y claro, ¡ya estamos hablando!

Joseph

A little off topic, disculpe.

All the East Asian characters I wrote in my introduction now just come up as question marks. If I change my browser, many of the characters unique to Spanish disappear, and Korean comes up in their place. It’s quite amusing actually, seeing Korean mixed up there. Every post with an exclamation mark begins with the Korean spelling of “Jing”.

Is it just a case of either Spanish/Romance Language fonts or East Asian? Can I properly view a page that contains both?

To Maxiewawa, to view multiple languages properly, Spod101 has to use unicode. I highly suggest everyone from Jpod101 to Spod101 to use unicode…

Hello, Joseph.

Thank you very much for your message. About what you said, I also agree that it’s easier for a Portuguese speaker to learn Spanish rather than the opposite.

I believe it’s because we have more sounds in Portuguese. Let’s take vowels as an example, there are basically 5 sounds in Spanish against 7 in Portuguese.

The difference of pronunciation between “posso” and “poço” are really clear for Portuguese speakers, but not for Spanish ones.

Also, there is the sound of “z” that doesn’t exist in Spanish either.

I believe these little differences make it easier for us to learn Spanish.

E claro, sempre que precisar praticar o seu português, estou a disposição!

¡Hasta pronto!

Oi, Joseph.

You really know a lot about Portuguese, don’t you??

If you prefer, we can continue this conversation through e-mail, because I believe these features of languages are fascinating and we may use all the space in the comments to talk about these differences between Port. and Spanish.

Just one point: we don’t pronounce “amicu”, it’s rather “amigu”, even though we write “amigo”. You also got into some very complicated aspects of Portuguese. Let’s see:

1) Brazil is a big country, so there is a huge variety of pronunciations depending on what part of the country you are. I speak “amigu”, but if you go to southern Brazil, people may say “amigo”.

2) We still have a very old grammar that is very far from the spoken language used nowadays.

3) There is also a very big difference between the Portuguese spoken in Brazil and the one in Portugal.

Therefore, those differences in pronunciation and verb usage depends on these and maybe more reasons.

About your example, we frequently say “se você tiver tempo amanhã”, that’s correct! But we can also say “se você tivesse tempo amanhã”. There is a slight difference in meaning, though. I would say the first one has a possibility to happen and the second one will surely not happen.

It would the same as “if you have time tomorrow” and “if you had time tomorrow”.

Just an observation: in other situations we also usually use the verb “ter” instead of “haver” in many cases. This is grammatically incorrect, but it’s frequently used in spoken language. Actually, we hardly use “haver”, except in formal situations or written language.

Well, that’s it for now. But, as I said before, if you want to write me an e-mail we can keep on this conversation going.

Ahora me despido.

Abrazos

Oi João Paulo!

Thanks for the insightful post! Max, glad you’re enjoying this! João, You make a good point about there being multiple dialects in Brasil, and I think that’s important to take into account when we’re talking about any language. Most of the Portuguese that I’ve learned is from Salvador da Bahia, in the north, so my observations carry with them that bias. Aside from that influence, I’m an avid reader, especially of older works (Conheces A Boca do Inferno?, é dizer, Gregório de Mattos e Guerra…), so again, my observations have that bias as well.

Concerning the use of the future subjunctive (futuro del subjuntivo, futuro do conjuntivo), this is what I was trying to point out: This form comes from Latin and is still used in Portuguese, while in Spanish it has disappeared. It’s probably not an entirely fair generalization, but I think it’s interesting enough to kindle the fire a little more. I understand that all the tenses aren’t used in everyday speech, but to my (foreign, and therefore prone to being mistaken) ear, it is more common in Portuguese than Spanish.

For example, we can say “si você houver tempo…”, which is the literary form, right? Or, “si você tiver tempo…”, which is the spoken form. What I see as important here is that this is the Future Tense of the Subjunctive Mood. As you rightly pointed out, we could also say “si você houvesse/tivesse tempo…”; but now this is the Imperfect Subjunctive. In contemporary Spanish, this is the tense that is used to indicate future, hypothetical actions… i.e. “si tuviera tiempo… si hubiera tiempo….” What I am trying to say is that it would be more uncommon to hear the future subjunctive in Spanish “si hubiere tiempo…” or “si tuviere tiempo” than it would in Portuguese… Maybe I’m wrong…? You would know better than me. What do you think? Am I entirely off base? Should I go back to Salvador to learn more?! Hehehe…

If we think about it in English, we might compare the modal verbs “should” to “had or has”. I would translate both “si houver/tiver tempo” and “si hubiere/tuviere tiempo” in the following way: “should you have time… or should there be time” Again, this sounds a little more ‘elevated’ or ‘literary’; however, we know that in contemporary English, we would often say “if you had the time’ or ‘if you have the time’. In English, the future Subjunctive is not that common anymore either. I usually use the example “should there be a problem…” as a model case which is still used regularly.

I hope that this conversation hasn’t bored the rest of you to death… If anyone wants anything talked about here explained, just drop a note. Thanks for making this interesting!

Joseph

Dude, as long as Lisi is there, everything is cool. She’s got an amazing voice I have ever heard!

hola.
is it bad to learn 2 languages at once? right now i am learning spanish in college and online of course. im going onto 3rd semester spanish (i started on 2nd semester and i took 3 years in high school. im starting to get bored with spanish and i kinda want to take french too. will this cause any problems or should i wait until i become fluent in spanish because right now im definitely not. lol.
hasta pronto!

Bridget,

That’s a good question. My initial reaction was the same as Maxiewawa, but upon reflection, I’m not sure. I mean, it’s definitely more difficult to learn more than one language at once, however, when looking at more than one language, you have the chance to compare structures, and seeing that you’re considering French, it will have a lot of similarities with Spanish. On the other hand, I think you need to ask yourself how much Spanish you want to learn. One of the good things about this course is that there are students from all different levels, so you are guaranteed to be challenged. I promise!

¿Qué tema están estudiando actualmente en tu curso? ¿Qué es lo que te confunde con respeto a la gramática? ¿Qué es lo que quisieras aprender? Yo creo que en el aprendizaje de un idioma un gran logro es empezar a comunicarse en el nuevo idioma. A mi parecer, el idioma español no es sólo el tema de nuestros estudios sino el modo también.

Pues, a ver qué nos cuentas de tu dilema…

Saludos,

Joseph

Bridget,

Sounds like you’re building a strong foundation. The Imperfect Tense can be tricky, but once you get used to it, you’ll find that it’s really quite easy.

First, the formation: use the root of the verb + the “-aba” ending for 1st conjugation verbs (from “amar”, “amaba”) and the “-ía” ending for second and third conjugation verbs (from “correr”, “corría”; from “decir”, “decía”.

Second, usage: The Imperfect expresses incomplete actions. Example: “vivía en españa”. We can translate this as “I was living in Spain” or “I used to live in Spain”.

The Preterit, on the other hand, describes completed past actions. Example: “te llamé” (I called you). In this case, the action of ‘calling’ is completed.

When we use these tenses together in a single sentence, their differences become clearer. Example: “caminaba a la tienda cuando me llamaste” (I was walking to the store when you called me). Notice how the action of “walking” is somewhat interrupted by the action of “calling”. Because the verb “caminaba” is in the imperfect tense, we don’t know when it began or ended, we just know that it happened before the present moment; but with the verb “llamaste”, when know that this began and ended before the present moment.

As for direct and indirect objects, let say this: direct objects are those which directly receive the verbal action, and the indirect objects are those which indirectly receive the verbal action. Example: “¿Me puedes pasar la mantiquilla?” (Can you pass me the butter?). Here, what receives the verbal action directly? Answer: “la mantiquilla” (the butter). What receives the verbal action indirectly? Answer: “me” (me).

Does this help? What are some of your other confusions with these topics? As practice, try to come up with sentences in English and Spanish which contain both direct and indirect objects, and you can use the imperfect and preterit tenses for this too. For example, try to translate these two sentences to Spanish:

1) I sent you a letter. (What is the direct object? The indirect object?
2) I was writing you a letter, but I didn’t finish. (What is the direct object? The indirect object?

Keep working! It will all pay off in time. I think it’s a great idea to study abroad. I studied in Concepción, Chile and I think it was a great help to me for a number of reasons!

Saludos,
Joseph

Mere,

¡Hola! Glad to hear that you’re checking out our course! Wow, German, Japanese and now Spanish! I hope to feed off of your ambition!

I completely know what you mean when you say that you miss the banter which is one of the things that makes japanesespod101 so enjoyable. My response to you is to please have patience, as we have many different people producing podcasts, and everyone is still getting used to it. We’re trying very hard to ‘loosen up’, so to speak, and help our students enjoy the learning process.

Also, I should tell you that your comments are extremely useful to us, and I will communicate your critique with the team. However, on the other hand, I have to admit that SpanishPod101 is a didactic course; though this doesn’t mean that we don’t have a good time doing it. For example, check out the Regional Series, where you get to learn how the lesson conversation from one of the Core Curriculum lessons would sound like in another part of the Spanish-speaking world.

In any case, I hope that you take your time and check out our lessons and the site in general.

Thanks for your comment and I look forward to hearing from you again!

Joseph

Bridget,

Good job on the translation. There are a few things that I want to point out, and hopefully this will help you understand the topic better.

I sent you a letter. (Te envié una carta.)

[Remember, that “te” is a non-prepositional indirect object pronoun. To see how a prepositional indirect object pronoun would work, consider this sentence “La carta es para tí.” (The letter is for you.) The prepositional indirect object pronouns are “mí, tí, él, ella, usted, nosotros, vosotros, ellos, ellas, ustedes” and the non-prepositional indirect object pronouns are “me, te, le, nos, os, les”.]

Here’s another way to look at it: You can say, “el tema es interesante para mí” (the topic is interesting for me), using a prepositional indirect object pronoun; or, you can use a non-prepositional indirect object pronoun and say “me es interesante el tema ” (the topic is interesting for me).

With this information, let’s see if you can correct your second sentence… You’re doing a great job!

Also, with reference to writing a letter, you might have something like this:

Estimada Juana, (Dear Jane)

Le saluda atentamente, (Yours sincerely,)
Jake

We’re going to be offering some lessons with information like writing letters, emails, making phone calls, plus much more in our “Sights and Sounds Series”, so keep your eyes open for that too.

¡Ya estamos hablando!

Joseph

Bridget,

From the looks of your translation, it seems like you have a better understanding of it now. Really great job! As for your requests about “bueno(a) and bien”, “estar and bien”, I posted a response in the Forum “All About Spanish”. The topic is “Bueno, -a; Buen; Bien”. I’ll post another response on “Por” and “Para” later on. This way, there’s a better chance that we can involve others in this discussion too, and I think when there are more people involved, it’s more likely that we all learn something.

¡Tus preguntas son muy buenas! ¡Estás haciendo un buen trabajo! ¡Espero que te vaya bien!

Joseph

This sounds like a beginner lesson, not a newbie lesson.

Hola Kory,

Great to have you with us! Sounds like an interesting opportunity. I’ll send you an email and we can talk about it further that way.

Ya estamos en contacto,
Joseph