Learn the many uses of the Spanish preposition de
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Natalia: Buenos días, me llamo Natalia. |
| Carlos: What’s going on? My name is Carlos. |
| Natalia: If you like, call back tomorrow. |
| Carlos: What’s going on, Pod101 world? My name is Carlos and I am joined here by Natalia. |
| Natalia: ¿Cómo están? |
| Carlos: How’s everyone doing? You know, Nati, sometimes secretaries at a doctor’s office aren’t polite. |
| Natalia: Yeah, but Carolina is very polite with Alejandro. |
| Carlos: Well, it must be stressful though, like every call is important, you know, to that person. |
| Natalia: Yeah, that’s why it’s important to keep things formal and calm. |
| Carlos: Makes sense. I always find with situations like that that it’s always your best bet. |
| Natalia: I agree. |
| Carlos: What grammar point do you have for us today? |
| Natalia: Well, I have the very important preposition “de”. |
| Carlos: Ok, let’s get into today’s conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| 1. KARINA: Buenos Días, ¿en qué le puedo ayudar? |
| 2. ALEJANDRO: Buenas, quería contactar al doctor para ver los resultados de unos exámenes. |
| 3. KARINA : Disculpe, pero el doctor no se encuentra en este momento. |
| 4. ALEJANDRO : No hay problema, ¿cuando puedo contactarlo? |
| 5. KARINA: Si gusta, puede llamarlo mañana. |
| 6. ALEJANDRO: Perfecto, muchas gracias. |
| Carlos: And now slower. Una vez más, esta vez lentamente. |
| 1. KARINA: Buenos Días, ¿en qué le puedo ayudar? |
| 2. ALEJANDRO: Buenas, quería contactar al doctor para ver los resultados de unos exámenes. |
| 3. KARINA : Disculpe, pero el doctor no se encuentra en este momento. |
| 4. ALEJANDRO : No hay problema, ¿cuando puedo contactarlo? |
| 5. KARINA: Si gusta, puede llamarlo mañana. |
| 6. ALEJANDRO: Perfecto, muchas gracias. |
| Carlos: And now with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| 1. KARINA: Buenos Días, ¿en qué le puedo ayudar? |
| 1. KARINA: Good morning, how may I help you? |
| 2. ALEJANDRO: Buenas, quería contactar al doctor para ver los resultados de unos exámenes. |
| 2. ALEJANDRO: Morning, I wanted to contact the doctor to see the results from some tests. |
| 3. KARINA : Disculpe, pero el doctor no se encuentra en este momento. |
| 3. KARINA: Excuse me, but the doctor is not here at this time. |
| 4. ALEJANDRO : No hay problema, ¿cuando puedo contactarlo? |
| 4. ALEJANDRO: No problem, when can I contact him? |
| 5. KARINA: Si gusta, puede llamarlo mañana. |
| 5. KARINA: If you'd like, you can call him tomorrow. |
| 6. ALEJANDRO: Perfecto, muchas gracias. |
| 6. ALEJANDRO: Perfect, thank you very much. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Carlos: You know, Nati, I swear I don’t like doctor’s offices because everybody seems so stressed out all the time. |
| Natalia: I know, I know, I know. But, you know, it’s important though. You shouldn’t avoid doctor’s. |
| Carlos: Well, I don’t avoid doctor’s, it’s the whole idea, like you feel like you’re bothering them and you have to fill out all those forms, and right now I don’t have health insurance and if I get sick down here what do I do? |
| Natalia: You go and open up the doors and be like “Aaah!” and they take you in emergencies even if you don’t have insurance. |
| Carlos: That’s good. |
| Natalia: Just so you know. |
| Carlos: Excellent. So if I do get hurt ever… |
| Natalia: Go straight to emergencies. |
| Carlos: I’ll go straight to the emergency room. Alright, well now that I got the direction from Nati, let’s take a look at the vocabulary for today’s lesson. First up we have a verb. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Natalia: “Ayudar”. |
| Carlos: “To help.” |
| Natalia: “A-yu-dar”, “ayudar”. |
| Carlos: Como por ejemplo... |
| Natalia: “El contexto de la palabra nos ayuda a entenderla”. |
| Carlos: “The context of a word helps us to understand it.” ¿Y otro verbo? |
| Natalia: “Contactar”. |
| Carlos: “To contact”, “get in touch.” |
| Natalia: “Con-tac-tar”, “contactar”. An example, ”¿a qué número te puedo contactar?”. |
| Carlos: “At what number can I contact you?” ¿Y un sustantivo masculino? |
| Natalia: “Resultado”. |
| Carlos: “Result.” |
| Natalia: “Re-sul-ta-do”, “resultado”. Por ejemplo, “esos resultados desafortunadamente no nos dicen mucho”. |
| Carlos: “The results unfortunately don’t tell us much.” ¿Y un verbo? |
| Natalia: “Encontrar”. |
| Carlos: “To find”, “to meet with.” |
| Natalia: “En-con-trar”, “encontrar”. Por ejemplo, “encuentran la playa”. |
| Carlos: “They find the beach.” And now… |
| Natalia: “Si”. |
| Carlos: “If.” |
| Natalia: “Si”, “si”. Por ejemplo, “Si lloviera esta noche, retiraríame de aquí a mil años o mejor a cien no más”. |
| Carlos: “If it were to rain tonight, I would withdraw from here 1,000 years, or maybe just 100.” And last but not least, a masculine noun. |
| Natalia: “Examen”. |
| Carlos: “Examination”, “exam.” |
| Natalia: “E-xa-men”, “examen”. Por ejemplo, “¿cuántos exámenes no has aprobado?” |
| Carlos: “How many exams haven’t you passed?” |
| Natalia: Carlos. |
| Carlos: Yes, Nati. |
| Natalia: You should try reading that one. “Si lloviera esta noche, retiraríame de aquí a mil años o mejor a cien no más”. That’s an interesting… |
| Carlos: That’s a Cesar … |
| Natalia: Sentence. |
| Carlos: Vallejo. |
| Natalia: ¿Cómo? I like it! |
| Carlos: “Si lloviera esta noche, retiraríame de aquí a mil años o mejor a cien no más”. |
| Natalia: Entonces, “Si lloviera esta noche, retiraríame de aquí a mil años o mejor a cien no más”. |
| Carlos: I'm trying, I'm trying. Alright, Nati, thank you for that. Let’s have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Natalia: The first word we’ll look at is “ayudar”. |
| Carlos: “Ayudar”, “to help”. You know what, another practical verb to learn. |
| Natalia: Why is that? |
| Carlos: Well, if you’re in trouble, you could scream “¡Ayúdame!”, “Help me!”. |
| Natalia: Well, that’s one important one to learn if you look at it that way, or the more calm if you need directions, como “¿usted puede ayudarme?”. |
| Carlos: If you want to be respectful, yes. And then I still think this is funny. |
| Natalia: What? |
| Carlos: You know, I was lost the other day and I had to ask directions but I knew I had to go through the whole, “buenas señor, ¿cómo está?”. He answered “bien, por dicha. ¿Y usted?” And then I proceeded to tell him that I was lost. Where I'm from, all you say is, “excuse me, is this the road to…?” |
| Natalia: Don’t laugh at the fact that Ticos are polite. |
| Carlos: No, never. Well, how can we define “ayudar” in Spanish? |
| Natalia: Well, “prestar cooperación”. |
| Carlos: I could see how “to lend cooperation” could be a definition cause you’re lending help. |
| Natalia: Well, when Carina asks Alejandro, “buenos días. ¿En qué le puedo ayudar?” |
| Carlos: “Good morning. How may I help you?” Nati, didn’t you used to answer phones in an office. |
| Natalia: Oh, don’t even remind me… |
| Carlos: How many times a day did you do that? |
| Natalia: Not really… I was just like, hello… That was when I used to work in Human Resources so usually the people that call me was people I knew, so I was like “buenos días, ¿en qué lo puedo ayudar…?”, bla bla bla, a tons of times a day. |
| Carlos: Ok, I won’t bring it up again. Obviously it upsets you. |
| Natalia: Have to block that part of my life. |
| Carlos: Ok, but how about one more sample sentence. |
| Natalia: Well, last week as you know, Carlos, we had a huge earthquake here and we had many victims. |
| Carlos: Yeah, it was a bad… a little North of San Jose. We were on the phone, remember? |
| Natalia: “Bueno, yo ayudo a las víctimas del terremoto con dinero”. “Well, I helped the victims of the earthquake with money.” |
| Carlos: You know, me too. There are a lot of special accounts at the bank now just for that. It’s a big deal here. |
| Natalia: Moving on, next word we have another verb, “contactar”. |
| Carlos: “Contactar”. “To contact”, “to get in touch.” |
| Natalia: “Contactar” can be defined as “establecer contacto o comunicación con alguien”. You could figure this one out also when Alejandro wants to speak to the doctor, he tells Carina: “Buenas. Quería contactar al doctor para ver los resultados de unos exámenes”. |
| Carlos: “Morning. I wanted to contact the doctor to see the results from some tests.” Those are always stressful phone calls, Nati. |
| Natalia: Yeah, those are the ones where they tell you, “Please wait”, and then the music comes out. Ugh… Well, you know, Carlos, you can use this in a more everyday way. |
| Carlos: How? |
| Natalia: Like, for example, “el estudiante necesita contactar a su profesor”. |
| Carlos: “The student needs to contact their professor.” Well, audience, if you need to contact us, you can reach us by leaving a comment. |
| Natalia: Hint. Ok, next a masculine noun, “resultado”. |
| Carlos: “Resultado”. “Result.” That’s pretty straight forward. |
| Natalia: “Re-sul-ta-do”. |
| Carlos: “Resultado”, and in our conversation? |
| Natalia: “Buenas, quería contactar al doctor para ver los resultados de unos exámenes”. |
| Carlos: “Morning. I wanted to contact the doctor to see the results for some tests.” |
| Natalia: Carlos, you give me a sample sentence. |
| Carlos: Keeping things fresh I see, Nati. Ok, well here is a sentence that can be taken either way. |
| Natalia: What? |
| Carlos: “El resultado del examen fue positivo”. “The results of the tests were positive.” |
| Natalia: Oh yeah, well all that depends on the context. Let’s go to our next word. Another verb, “encontrar”. |
| Carlos: “Encontrar”. “To find”, “to meet with.” |
| Natalia: Or “dar”. Dar con alguien o algo que se busca. And in our conversation we heard it in the “disculpe, pero el doctor no se encuentra en este momento”. |
| Carlos: “Excuse me, but the doctor is not here at this time.” So here it is insinuating presence. |
| Natalia: Más o menos. |
| Carlos: Well, how about another example sentence that corresponds with our definition we see here? |
| Natalia: “Voy a encontrar la información en internet”. |
| Carlos: “I'm going to find the information online.” Well, there you go. I see it now. You know, I would name a popular website that Nati got me really obsessed with but I'm not going to mention their name, I was about to but they’re rich enough. |
| Natalia: I think I know what you’re talking about. |
| Carlos: I know you do. Ok, what’s next? |
| Natalia: “Si”. |
| Carlos: “Sí”, like “yes”. |
| Natalia: No, no, no. “Si”, “if”, “but”. |
| Carlos: What’s the difference? |
| Natalia: Well, there is an accent on the “i” then it’s “yes”, but without an accent “si” is an interjection that means “if” or “but”. |
| Carlos: Ok. |
| Natalia: We’re getting complicated, huh? “Si: denota condición o suposición en virtud de la cual un concepto depende de otro u otros”. |
| Carlos: Oh, that clears everything up. |
| Natalia: In the conversation, Carina says, “si gusta, puede llamarlo mañana”. |
| Carlos: “If you’d like, you could call him tomorrow.” Ok, I could see that. |
| Natalia: Or another example would be “si tú quieres yo te llamo más tarde”. |
| Carlos: “If you want I’ll call you later.” I think I got it. What about you, audience? |
| Natalia: Last but not least, “examen”, a masculine noun. |
| Carlos: I got this one, “exam”, “examen”, “examen”, “exam.” |
| Natalia: Someone gets this man a cookie so I can still run away laughing. |
| Carlos: Ok, well it is a cognate, no? |
| Natalia: Yes, both of these words are very similar. “Indagación y estudio que se hace acerca de las cualidades y circunstancias de una cosa o de un hecho”. So tell us how it was used in this conversation. |
| Carlos: Well, we’ve already seen the example today so it’s pretty easy to recall. “Buenas, quería contactar al doctor para ver los resultados de unos exámenes”. “Morning, I wanted to contact the doctor to see the results for some tests.” |
| Natalia: But I'm sure you can think of another sentence. |
| Carlos: Give me a sec. Ok, here we go. “Los exámenes de idiomas son muy fáciles para mí”. |
| Natalia: “The language exams are very easy for me.” I know you’re talking about me and not you. |
| Carlos: What? The exams can be easy, don’t doubt me. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Natalia: Ah ok. Carlos, I propose we look at prepositions. |
| Carlos: Sure, did you have any in mind? |
| Natalia: Actually I did. The preposition “de”. |
| Carlos: Ah, good one. |
| Natalia: Do you know what “de” is used to express? |
| Carlos: “De” is used to express possession and membership. |
| Natalia: How does it do this? |
| Carlos: We express the possession by means of the name of the possessor preceded by the preposition “de”. |
| Natalia: How so? |
| Carlos: Well, for example, “el libro de Martín”, “Martin’s book.” |
| Natalia: And with membership? |
| Carlos: And with membership we do not refer to the relationship between the possessor and the thing possessed. Instead we refer to the attributes or objects contained in a person or thing. |
| Natalia: Can we say that in another way? |
| Carlos: Sure. We convey the qualities, nature, condition or character something or someone. For example, “es un día de sol”. “It’s a sunny day.” |
| Natalia: Along these lines we use the preposition “de” to express the material of which something is made. |
| Carlos: For example. |
| Natalia: “La falda de algodón”. “The cotton skirt”. Well, this issue has an extended to signify of the matter or issue or of something. |
| Carlos: For example? |
| Natalia: “El discurso trata de la economía”. “The lecture is about economics”. |
| Carlos: I see. |
| Natalia: So the prepositions are invariable, they will never undergo any form changes. Like we see in the verbs, nouns or adjectives. |
| Carlos: Right, but you can expect to see this preposition used as a prefix at the beginning of the word sometimes. You know, we’ll go deeper into that another time, won’t we, Nati? |
| Natalia: Yes, we will. Here are some sample sentences to help you on the way. |
| Carlos: Shoot. |
| Natalia: “¿Dónde dejaste el libro de Martín?” |
| Carlos: “Where did you leave Martin’s book?” |
| Natalia: “No podrás resistir la sinceridad de Miguel”. |
| Carlos: “You won’t be able to resist the sincerity of Miguel.” |
| Natalia: “Al entrar a la sala noté de inmediato el brillo del piso”. |
| Carlos: “Upon entering the living room, I immediately noticed the shine of the floor.” |
| Natalia: “Eres un estudiante de talento, te recomiendo que sigas con los estudios”. |
| Carlos: “You’re a student of talent, I recommend you continue with your studies.” |
| Natalia: ”El puente de madera se está por romper”. |
| Carlos: “The wooden bridge is about to break.” |
| Natalia: “¿Han visto mi cuaderno de cuero?” |
| Carlos: “Have you seen my leather notebook?” |
| Natalia: “Te presto mi libro de geografía”. |
| Carlos: “I’ll lend you my book of geography.” |
| Natalia: “Hablábamos de la política”. |
| Carlos: “We were talking about politics.” Wow, wow, wow there, Nati, no politics or religions discussed on SpanishPod101.com. |
| Natalia: Oh yeah, I forgot to see the terms and condition before writing this. I'm sorry. |
Outro |
| Carlos: Well, you know, that’s it. That does it for today, Nati, I can't go any farther. Alright, ¡nos vemos!, ¡chao! |
| Natalia: Adios. |
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