Thanks to Kevin MacLeod for the music used in today’s lesson.

So, in today’s lesson, we cover the verbs “dar”, “ver” and “oír”. Now, who can translate the following sentences?

1) Give me a coffee. (using the Present Indicative as a command*)

2) I see you.

3) You hear me, but you don’t listen to me.

¡Suerte!

Good job, Mariposa. Let me point out a couple of things. First, your translations are almost flawless. In Spanish, the word “mas” is very, very formal, if not altogether antiquated. In order to say “but”, we tend to say “pero”. Sounds like a little Portuguese leaking through.

As for the placement of pronouns, we can think about them this way: They are must always placed before the verb, except when they are added to 1) a verb in the infinitive, 2) a gerund or 3) a verb in the imperative.

For example:

Susana me dió su número de teléfono. (Susana gave me her phone number)
Susana, dáme tu número de teléfono. (Susana, give me your phone number.)

Susana va a darme su número de teléfono. (Susana is going to give me her phone number.)
or…
Susana me va a dar su número de teléfono. (Susana is going to give me her phone number.)

Susana está dándome su número de teléfono. (Susana is giving me her phone number.)
Susana me está dando su número de teléfono. (Susana is giving me her phone number.)

Whenever a pronoun is fused to a gerund, there is always a graphic accent.

Does this help? Can anyone think of more examples following these rules?

I’m not completely sure if we can make a clear-cut distinction between Iberian and Latin American Spanish here, with regards to the placement of the pronoun, which we can also call the decision to use or not use “proclitics” (pronoun before the verb) or “enclitics” pronoun attached to the end of the verb.

From my experience in Latin America the proclitic pronoun is very common: “ella me llamó” (she called me), “me da” (give me…indicative mood with the value of a command)…instead of the imperative “dáme”. The thing is, when we don’t just express an action with one verb, but with a number of verbs (in a periphrastic construction like “I’m going to go to bed) the pronoun can sometimes participate in the action of more than one verb.

For example, “me voy a acostar” is what I’d say to a family member when I’m actually about to go to bed, but I would say “voy a acostarme” as a way of excusing myself from a situation; maybe in English something like “I need to go bed”. But the placement of the pronoun before the first verb of the perisphrastic construction can also participate in the action of the verb “voy”, “me voy” (I’m out of here”.

What we were trying to get at in this lesson was that this preference of proclisis over enclisis is so strong that you can even see it commands, where we often say “me da” instead of “dáme”. Imagine you’re making plans with a friend and you want her to call you so that you can pick her up, you could say “me das una timbrada y te recojo” (give me a ring and I’ll pick you up).

Maybe Megan knows if this happens in Spain?