Dialogue

Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Lizzie: Buenos días, soy Lizzie.
Allan: Hi, everybody. I’m Allan.
Lizzie: Beginners Series Lesson Number 7.
Allan: When do you want to go to the beach?
Lizzie: What are we doing today Allan?
Allan: Well, last time we had a good look at the question word qué.
Lizzie: Ok.
Allan: Now today we’re going to build on what we learned and focus on another question word - cuándo.
Lizzie: Where does our conversation take place today?
Allan: Well, this conversation takes place in Cancun Mexico, where Angela and Gabriela try to make plans for a beach day.
Lizzie: Don’t forget to check out the verb conjugation charts in the reference material of the Learning Center at SpanishPod101.com
Allan: All the Spanish you could want at the click of a button.
Lizzie: Well people let’s get into today’s conversation.
DIALOGUE
ANGELA: ¿Cuándo deseas ir a la playa?
GABRIELA: Quizás el sábado.
ANGELA: Pero el sábado no puedo ir.
GABRIELA: ¿Puedes ir el domingo?
ANGELA: Sí, puedo.
GABRIELA: Entonces, vamos el domingo.
ANGELA: When do ya' wanna' go to the beach?
GABRIELA: Maybe Saturday.
ANGELA: But Saturday I can't go.
GABRIELA: Can ya' go on Sunday?
ANGELA: Yeah, I can.
GABRIELA: So then, let's go on Sunday.
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Lizzie: Allan, if you had to work on Monday would you want to go to the beach on Sunday? I would like to stay more than one day.
Allan: I would like to stay all week but, hey, we don’t always have that luxury. So frequently we do just go for one day. And you know what, Lizzie, if you start early and stay late you can pretty much get your fill of the sun and the sand. Ok, friends, on to the vocab. Here we’re going to break down these words syllable by syllable so that you can hear exactly how each word sounds.
Lizzie: Vamos!
Allan: So let’s begin with…
VOCAB LIST
Lizzie: Cuándo.
Allan: When.
Lizzie: Cuándo,cuándo.
Allan: Next we’ll look at…
Lizzie: Pero.
Allan: But.
Lizzie: Pero,pero.
Allan: Now we have…
Lizzie: Poder.
Allan: Can, to be able to.
Lizzie: Poder, poder.
Allan: Then we’ll hear…
Lizzie: Quizás.
Allan: Maybe, perhaps.
Lizzie: Quizás,quizás.
Allan: Now we’ll listen to…
Lizzie: Entonces.
Allan: Then, so then.
Lizzie: Entonces, entonces.
Allan: And finally…
Lizzie: A.
Allan: To, at.
Lizzie: A, a.
VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE
Allan: Lizzie, when would you like to at some of the usage of our vocabulary words today?
Lizzie: How about now, Allan?
Allan: Ok, good, because our first word is cuándo.
Lizzie: ¿Cuándo quieres empezar?
Allan: When would you like to begin?
Lizzie: So you can see that the question word cuándo means “when”? And it’s the first word of the sentence.
Allan: You could even just ask cuándo if you wanted to say “when”.
Lizzie: And to ask questions with “when” you can simply place another verb after cuándo.
Allan: That’s right Lizzie. Would you give us an example?
Lizzie: ¿Cuándo salimos?
Allan: When do we leave?
Lizzie: Right. Simply by adding the verb salimos.
Allan: We leave.
Lizzie: After the interrogative verb cuándo, the question now asks when do we leave? When asked as a question, we can translate the verb salimos as “do we leave”?
Allan: Yet when it’s a statement, it is translated “we do leave” or simply “we leave”.
Lizzie: Ok, the next word were going to look at is playa.
Allan: Lizzie, how about an example with playa?
Lizzie: La playa es hermosa.
Allan: The beach is beautiful.
Lizzie: So we see that playa means “beach” and it’s a feminine noun.
Allan: That’s right. And that means that if you’re going to modify with an adjective you’ll need to make sure that you use a feminine adjective.
Lizzie: That’s why it’s hermosa and not hermoso. Next let’s take a look at pero.
Allan: Lizzie, would you give us an example?
Lizzie: El lago es lindo pero frío.
Allan: The lake is pretty but cold.
Lizzie: So the word pero, which means “but”, is the kind of word that introduces a phrase in opposition to the phrase that comes before it. This is called una conjunción adversativa.
Allan: Which in English an adversative conjunction, if you want to impress your friends and your Spanish teacher at school.
Lizzie: Alright. The last word that we’re going to look at today is quizás.
Allan: Lizzie, how about one more example.
Lizzie: Quizás estoy atrasado.
Allan: “Maybe I am late.” Right, so this word quizás] is said in the tone of “who knows”. We can translate it as “maybe” or “perhaps”.
Lizzie: It means that you don’t know or aren’t sure about something. It’s a word commonly express not only indecision but also possibility.
Allan: That’s right. Quizás would be another word to express the “maybe”. I think there’s a song, isn’t there? Quizás quizás quizás. You have a much nicer voice than I do, Lizzie. Do you remember that song?
Lizzie: Sí sí. Yo la canto yo la canto. Siempre que te pregunto ¿qué, cómo, cuándo y dónde? Tú siempre me respondes: quizás, quizás, quizás.
Allan: That’s a Nat King Cole tune from years and years ago. It’s been covered by many other people since then.
Lizzie: Pero realmente una canción que no pasa de moda ¿eh? Ha sido re-actualizada varias veces por otros intérpretes.
Allan: You’re right, you’re right. It just hasn’t lost its power. And essentially it says “And you answer me when I ask you these series questions you just answer me maybe, maybe, maybe”.
Lizzie: Quizás quizás quizás
--
Allan: Let’s have a move thorough look at the grammar now from this lesson.

Lesson focus

Lizzie: To begin let’s have a look at the cuándo.
Allan: When.
Lizzie: Cuándo is an interrogative adverb.
Allan: That means it’s a question-word question. Hey, Liz, how is cuándo used?
Lizzie: It is used to ask for the time of an event. Let’s go back to where this appeared in the conversation.
Allan: Ok, Lizzie, can you repeat that sentence?
Lizzie: ¿Cuándo desea ir a la playa?
Allan: When do you want to go to the beach?
Lizzie: Now.
Allan: Yo tambien.
Lizzie: So you can see that the question word cuándo, which means “when”, is placed at the beginning of the sentence.
Allan: With questions of this kind this is always the case.
Lizzie: The word order for questions with interrogative adverbs is first the interrogative adverb, then the verb, and finally the noun. ¿Cuándo desea ir a la playa?
Allan: Lizzie would you show us how this word order is consistent with another “when” question?
Lizzie: ¿Cuando regrese de su viaje?
Allan: When do you get back from the trip?
Lizzie: Again we see cuándo, the interrogative adverb regresas, the present tense adverb conjugated to the second person singular, and viaje the masculine singular noun. The word order has stayed the same.
Allan: So we’re starting to see a pattern here people. In Beginner lesson 5 we saw the same word order with the question word dónde where? That is, we saw that we used the question word, then the verb, and finally the noun.
Lizzie: Again in lesson 6 with the question word qué “what”? We saw the same word order. And now with the question word cuándo “when”, we see it yet again.
Allan: It’s really important to make these kinds of connections, friends. It will help you a lot.
Lizzie: Yeah. Language is so about patterns.
Allan: Learning a language is all about identifying these patterns and using them communicate. Ok, now the word cuándo is also used in some expressions. Finish this section I’d like to bring up one of these which is a lot of fun. , if I say tengo hambre which we know means “I’m hungry”, what expression with cuándo can we use to poke fun?
Lizzie: ¿Cuándo no?
Allan: When are you not?
Lizzie: What you can do with this phrase is poke fun at someone’s habitual actions.
Allan: And this expression works as a response to any affirmative statement.
Lizzie: I could say: Tengo sueño. Which means I’m tired and you say…
Allan: ¿Cuándo no?
Lizzie: Right and now it means “When are you not tired?” Spanish is full of funny little phrases like this and this is just one example of them.
Allan: You know, I remember the first time in Peru I had a friend that was learning Spanish and he wanted to say tengo hambre to a Peruvian party and he said tengo hombre.
Lizzie: Oh.
Allan: Which meant “I have a man”. He got a quizzical response from the other fellow.
Lizzie: Eso es… eso es un error garrafal. Tremendo.
Allan: Yeah, it was kind of… they got over it. Anyway, you know, this word cuándo there is a beautiful expression in Spanish that we don’t have in English. It’s an idiomatic expression and it’s cuando el rio suena es porque piedras trae. You remember that one, Lizzie?
Lizzie: Por supuesto, cuando el rio suena es porque piedras trae. Eso es como decir este… cuando hay un rumor sobre alguien, sobre algo, finalmente ese rumor resulta siendo cierto.
Allan: That’s right. That’s right. So cuando el rio suena “When the river is making sounds”, cuando el rio suena es porque piedras trae “it’s because there’s stones in the river|. So the river is pulling stones down with it so you kind of hear a rumbling sound. Now what Lizzie just explained to us is that that expression is used when, for example, a lot of people are starting to say a rumor about someone for example I think those guys are having trouble in their relationship. And you hear that rumor from a few people, and then, you know, a week later that couple breaks up. You can say cuando el rio suena es porque piedras trae.. Or “There was lots of noise, there’s lots of sound being made about that couple, and in fact all those people were right.” So if you’re hearing rumors, they might be true.
Lizzie: They might be true.
Allan: But not always, right, Liz?
Lizzie: Not always.

Outro

Allan: That’s it for today’s lesson.
Lizzie: Don’t forget to check the lesson transcripts in the PDF at Spanishpod101.com
Allan: Also feel free to use our forum for your questions.
Lizzie: And if you’d like to leave a comment, we’ll be happy to respond.
Allan: So don’t be a stranger.
Lizzie: No se pierdan.
Allan: Chao.
Lizzie: Chao.

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Dialogue - Bilingual

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