Asking for Clarification - Part 1

Learn how to ask for clarification

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Lesson Transcript

¡Hola! Soy Brenda Romaniello, tu profesora de español.

Hello! My name is Brenda Romaniello and I’m your Spanish teacher.

Today, we’re going to have a look at some vocabulary and expressions for asking clarifications in Spanish.

Let’s start with repetirlo.

repetirlo

Can you repeat after me?

repetirlo

escribirlo

enseñarme cómo se pronuncia

hablar más despacio

The last one:

decirlo otra vez

In the case of repetirlo, it means “repeat that,” repeat that but it literally means “repeat it.”

The same with escribirlo “write it.”

Y decirlo “say it again.”

That’s what it literally means, but you don’t need to- please don’t think that it’s rude or anything like that. It’s perfectly okay to say it like that in Spanish.

decirlo otra vez

repetirlo

escribirlo

This is the structure that we are going to use to ask someone to repeat what they said or for clarification. We’re going to say disculpa, disculpa, and then the question, puedes más the verb phrase. Whichever of these options that we have learned before will work perfectly fine here.

Disculpa, ¿puedes + [verb phrase]?

Disculpa, ¿puedes…?

And it’s very important to remember that puedes, in this case, because it’s in between these question mark, we know that that’s a question in Spanish.

Can you… then the verb phrase.

Excuse me, can you…?

So, it’s very important to put these, the intonation to make it a question, so that the Spanish speaker knows that you are asking a question here.

Disculpa, ¿puedes…?

Let’s have a look at some examples:

Disculpa, ¿puedes repetirlo?

Repeat after me:

Disculpa, ¿puedes repetirlo?

Disculpa, ¿puedes escribirlo?

Disculpa, ¿puedes hablar más despacio?

Disculpa, ¿puedes decirlo otra vez?

Something else that I want to point about these vocabulary is that “Disculpa, ¿puedes…” this is for informal register, for an informal register. That means that this is for a casual conversation, if you’re talking to a friend, a family member. If you are in a little bit of a more formal situation, then you can change to a formal register. And instead of saying “Disculpa, ¿puedes…” we’re going to use exactly the same verb phrase, but we are going to change the register for disculpa and puedes. We’re going to say “Disculpe, ¿puede…”

“Disculpe, ¿puede…”

So remember, this is going to be a formal register, “Disculpe, ¿puede…”

So, if you don’t know the person very well or if you are in a formal situation like talking to your boss or someone that you need to- someone that you want to show some respect or you don’t know very well so it’s a formal situation, you can use this instead.

Let’s have a look at now at some scenarios that you can have to use this useful phrases for asking for clarifications in Spanish.

So, the first one is to ask someone to repeat what they just said. So, if you want someone to repeat themselves because you couldn’t hear them properly, then you can ask this question:

Disculpa, ¿puedes repetirlo?

You can always throw a por favor as well just to be a little more polite.

Disculpa, ¿puedes repetirlo por favor?

You can also use this following phrase if you want someone to speak a little bit slower. They’re speaking too fast in Spanish and you need them to slow down.

So you can say - Disculpa, ¿puedes hablar más despacio?

Disculpa, ¿puedes hablar más despacio?

Again, we can throw up por favor there and oh, our manners are on point.

Disculpa, ¿puedes hablar más despacio por favor?

And the last scenario that we’re going to see here is, for example, if we are asking someone to write down what they just said. If you want the Spanish speaker to write it down for you, some information that they’re sharing with you, this is what we can say.

We can say - Disculpa, ¿puedes escribirlo?

Disculpa, ¿puedes escribirlo? “Can you write it down?”

¿Puedes escribirlo por favor?

¡Fantástico!

And now, we are going to put all these into practice and we’re going to see a conversation. Let’s say that two people are meeting at the gym and this is the conversation that they’re having.

One person says:

Me llamo Gael González.

The other person answers:

Disculpa, ¿puedes repetirlo?

¿Puedes repetirlo?

In this conversation, you can see that this second person didn’t understand or they couldn’t catch what this other person were saying, the name of this other person was saying. So, we can use these expressions, yes, these verb phrases to ask for the person to repeat themselves again.

Disculpa, ¿puedes repetirlo?

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