Learn how to talk about the weather
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Lizy: Buenos días, soy Lizy. |
| Alan: Alan here. |
| Lizy: Newbie series, lesson #15. |
| Alan: “It’s cold out.” |
| Lizy: Umm… |
| Alan: And it is cold out today. You know in “La Molina” where we are doing this recording is higher up from the sea than the neighborhood both where Lizy and I live which is close to the ocean and usually when we drive out here, we slowly go from the clouds into the sunshine but today it’s cloudy and it’s cold out. |
| Lizy: Les contamos a nuestros amigos en SpanishPod que tenemos muchos microclimas aquí en Lima. Lo que es pegado a la costanera o el mar es pues más frío no y lo que es más pegadito a las montañas, como en La Molina desde donde estamos transmitiéndoles, hace más calorcito. |
| Alan: That’s right. So microclimate in Lima, not just in Lima but in all of Peru, Lizy, I think that Peru has more microclimates than just about any country on earth. |
| Lizy: Yes. |
| Alan: So friends, here we go for lesson #15 of the newbie series. |
| Lizy: I think we’ve almost finished the wall with all these bricks we are laying. |
| Alan: You know Lizy, I couldn’t agree more and we have a good one for today friends, something the whole world deals with. |
| Lizy: What’s that? |
| Alan: Well, the weather. |
| Lizy: Ah, we can see how expressions concerning weather are formed a little differently in Spanish than they are in English. |
| Alan: You know I’ve heard that 9 out of 10 conversations between strangers would never occur if it were not for the weather. “So kind of cold weather we are having today isn’t it!” “Well it’s very hot today, isn’t it?” So anyway, this is just what I had in mind. |
| Lizy: Today’s expressions deal particularly with the cold. |
| Alan: So I assume the conversation doesn’t take place in Puerto Rico or Cuba. |
| Lizy: No, today’s conversation takes place high up in the city of Cusco, Perú, where Marcelo and Daniela talk about how cold it is. |
| Alan: Uff I’ve been to Cusco. I’ve had that conversation. Hey friends, sync up your iPods, plug in the headphones, download the PDF and jack up the volume. Lesson #15 is on its way. |
| Lizy: Okay. Let’s get into today’s conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| MARCELO: ¡Hace frío! ¿Tienes frío? |
| DANIELA: ¡Sí! Yo tengo frío. |
| MARCELO: Yo también tengo frío. |
| DANIELA: ¿Necesitamos abrigos? |
| MARCELO: Necesitamos gorros y guantes también. |
| Alan: And now slower. Una vez más esta vez lentamente. |
| MARCELO: ¡Hace frío! ¿Tienes frío? |
| DANIELA: ¡Sí! Yo tengo frío. |
| MARCELO: Yo también tengo frío. |
| DANIELA: ¿Necesitamos abrigos? |
| MARCELO: Necesitamos gorros y guantes también. |
| Alan: And now with the translation. Ahora incluiremos la traducción. |
| MARCELO: ¡Hace frío! ¿Tienes frío? |
| MARCELO: It's cold out! Are ya' cold? |
| DANIELA: ¡Sí! Yo tengo frío. |
| DANIELA: Yeah! I'm cold. |
| MARCELO: Yo también tengo frío. |
| MARCELO: I'm cold too. |
| DANIELA: ¿Necesitamos abrigos? |
| DANIELA: Do we need coats? |
| MARCELO: Necesitamos gorros y guantes también. |
| MARCELO: We need hats and gloves too. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Lizy: Alan, when you first moved to Lima, were you surprised of the weather? |
| Alan: Lizy you know I came from Canada. And I think that's where weather was invented. So you can almost say that when I came to Lima I was surprised by the lack of weather. Here the temperature between winter and summer hardly changes. Maybe 10 degrees difference, in summer you take off your sweater, in winter you put on the sweater. That's a little different than Canada. |
| Lizy: Uff, sí allá el frío es tremendo, ¿verdad? |
| Alan: Uff, you know in Canada, I was born in a place called Saskatchewan. You don't have to memorize that. You know, the weather could go down to 40 degrees minus cero in winter and 40 degrees above cero in summer. Of course I'm talking Celsius here. But yeah Lima has very very, can we say a tempered climate. |
| Lizy: Es un clima llevadero. I know that a lot of people that I meet who come here are surprised of the weather. |
| Alan: No, I completely understand. Cos, it is humid. And sometimes it's overcast for weeks at a time. Okay amigos on to the vocab. Here we are going to breakdown those words syllable by syllable. So that you can hear exactly how each word sounds. |
| Lizy: Vamos. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Alan: All right, Liz. Let's begin with. |
| Lizy: Hacer. |
| Alan: “To make”, “to do”. |
| Lizy: “Ha-cer”, “hacer”. |
| Alan: Okay, then we will go to... |
| Lizy: “Frío, fría”. |
| Alan: “Cold.” |
| Lizy: “Frí-o, frí-a”, “frío, fría”. |
| Alan: Great. Now let’s listen to... |
| Lizy: “Abrigo”. |
| Alan: “Coat.” |
| Lizy: “A-bri-go”, “abrigo”. |
| Alan: Awesome okay. Let’s hear... |
| Lizy: “Gorro”. |
| Alan: “Hat.” |
| Lizy: “Go-rro”, “gorro”. |
| Alan: Okay, next... |
| Lizy: “Guante”. |
| Alan: “Gloves.” |
| Lizy: “Guan-te”, “guante”. |
| Alan: And last but not least... |
| Lizy: “Necesitar”. |
| Alan: “To need.” |
| Lizy: “Ne-ce-si-tar”, “necesitar”. |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Alan: And now friends, a quick tip to keep your Spanish nice and crisp. The word “gorro”. |
| Lizy: “Gorro”. |
| Alan: In Spanish, you will find that the double “R” indicates a rolling of the “R.” |
| Lizy: Like “carro”. |
| Alan: A lot of people have trouble with rolling their “Rs” but all it takes is a little practice “gorro”. |
| Lizy: “Gorro”. |
| Alan: That’s right. Tip of the tongue against the roof of your mouth “gorro”. |
| Lizy: Una vez más, “gorro”. |
| Alan: How are we going to do this? |
| Lizy: Our first word will be “hacer”. |
| Alan: Lizy, tell me do you brown bag it or do you buy lunch? |
| Lizy: “Yo hago el almuerzo”. |
| Alan: “I make lunch.” |
| Lizy: But the verb “hacer” has a number of meanings. Doesn’t it Alan? |
| Alan: Well, it sure does. Here it means “to make.” |
| Lizy: It can also mean “to do.” |
| Alan: And in this lesson, we are going to be looking at how it’s used with weather expressions. Lizy, would you say that “hacer” is commonly used? |
| Lizy: Oh, yes. The verb “hacer” is used all the time in Spanish. So we will make sure we get it down right from the get go. |
| Alan: The next word we are going to look at today is “frío”. |
| Lizy: “Tengo frío”. |
| Alan: “I am cold.” |
| Lizy: The word “frío” means “cold.” |
| Alan: And you can see that we use the verb “tener” which usually means “to have” in order to express coldness just like we did in newbie lesson 9 when we talked about “being hungry” and “having hunger.” |
| Lizy: And the same thing happens when expressing coldness. In Spanish, we say that “we have cold” instead of saying that “we are cold.” |
| Alan: That is we use the verb “tener” and not “estar”. Okay, the next vocabulary word is “abrigo”. |
| Lizy: “Me gusta el abrigo”. |
| Alan: “The coat is pleasing to me.” |
| Lizy: Or “I like the coat.” So you can see that “abrigo” means “coat.” This is related to the verb “abrigar” which means “to bundle up” but we will look at that in future lessons. |
| Alan: For now let’s remember that “abrigo” means “coat.” |
| Lizy: Next up. Our old favorite “gorro”. |
| Alan: Okay Liz, how about one more example of that? |
| Lizy: “El gorro es sueco”. |
| Alan: “The hat is Swedish.” |
| Lizy: So the word “gorro” means “hat.” |
| Alan: It’s the most general word for “hat” which means that it could refer to winter hat, a baseball cap or really any kind of a cloth hat. |
| Lizy: Here the context tells us that it’s been used as a winter hat. |
| Alan: Context is always super important. |
| Lizy: Always. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Alan: Okay, let’s get to the cream of the cookie in this lesson, the grammar. |
| Lizy: Today we will look at how to form weather expressions with a verb “hacer”. |
| Alan: To do this in the Spanish language is really pretty easy because every weather expression that uses “hacer” requires the third person singular form. |
| Lizy: For the present which we are focusing on today, this is “hace”. |
| Alan: Lizy, why don’t you remind us where this came up in the conversation? |
| Lizy: Claro. “¡Hace frío!” |
| Alan: “It’s cold out.” Now there is something important that we should recognize here. |
| Lizy: What’s that? |
| Alan: Well it’s important to recognize that there is idiomatic usage in play here. For example, if we were to translate this expression literally, we would say “it makes cold” or “it does cold.” |
| Lizy: Right, but this of course is not how this expression is really translated. Many weather expressions use this basic construction which takes “hace”, the third person singular of “hacer” in the present and an adjective that describes the weather. |
| Alan: We will be looking at some of these expressions in the upcoming lessons. |
| Lizy: Now with the expression “¡hace frío!” we can modify it to mean “it’s really cold out” or “it’s chilly out.” |
| Alan: Lizy, do us a favor and show us how this works. |
| Lizy: Como no, Alan. “¡Hace mucho frío!” |
| Alan: “It’s really cold out.” |
| Lizy: So by adding the adjective “mucho” which means “a lot” or “much”, the meaning of our expression changes from “its cold out” to “it’s really cold out.” |
| Alan: And Lizy, if we wanted to say that it’s cold but not that cold, how would you say that? |
| Lizy: “Hace fresco”. |
| Alan: “It’s chilly out.” |
| Lizy: The word “fresco” which means “chilly” and also “fresh” changes the meaning of our expression. |
| Alan: Now we say that it’s cold but not that cold and in fact it’s chilly out. |
| Lizy: So you can see that the adjective simply goes after the third person singular conjugation of the verb “hacer” in the present to form weather expressions. |
| Alan: Trust us audience. You will get used to this one as time goes on. I mean you will hear it all the time. |
| Lizy: It takes one step at a time. |
| Alan: That’s right. Keep with it and it will begin to make sense, guaranteed. |
Outro |
| Alan: Okay friends, that’s about it for today. Take care and we will be speaking to you again very soon. Chao! |
| Lizy: Cuidense mucho, ¡chao! |
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