Spanish from Scratch 1

Hello everyone and welcome to Spanish Obsessed’s beginners’ Spanish from Scratch series. This series is for you if you have literally no knowledge of Spanish and want to learn the basics. I’m Rob, and I’m English, and we also have Lis

Who is Colombian, and we’ll be guiding you through your first foray into Spanish. We hope to teach you all the basic vocabulary and grammar that you need to navigate through the Spanish speaking world and we have a big emphasis on phrases and pronunciation. So, here’s how it works. Me and Lis will have a conversation in Spanish as happens across the Spanish speaking world millions of times every day, then we’ll repeat that conversation slowly, giving you time after each phrase to repeat what we say. It’s really important that you do that, as it helps to properly anchor it in your mind. We suggest that you rewind this part, and repeat it until you’ve really got it. It’s actually a good idea to memorise the conversation. Then, we’ll take the conversation apart and really analyse everything we said. We’ll teach you the snippets of grammar which we used, what the vocabulary was and how that’s used, and we’ll really hone in on the specifics of the pronunciation. Finally, we’ll give you a couple more bits of Spanish you can use as well, this is usually pretty informal cool Spanish stuff, people are going to be impressed if you can use this. Also, check out all of our associated materials below the podcast on Spanishobsessed.com. Ok, in our first situation, Rob and Lis meet each other for the first time, but we don’t know each other. Hola, eres Lis?

No, no soy Juan. Soy Rob.

Un placer. ¿Cómo estás?

Espectacular! And now we’ll repeat with spaces, for you to repeat each phrase after us. Hola, eres Lis?

No, no soy Juan. Soy Rob.

Un placer. ¿Cómo estás?

Espectacular!

Ok, so here’s our analysis of our conversation. So the first phrase that I said, was “hola, ¿eres Lis?”. And as I’m sure everyone already knows, “hola” means “hello”. You don’t pronounce the “h”, so it’s not “hola” it’s “o-la”. “Hola, ¿eres Lis?” means “are you Lis?”. “Eres” can mean two things, depending on how you pronounce it. It can mean “are you” as in the question “are you Lis?”, or it can mean “you are”, like “you are Lis”. So listen to two examples, and this is how you can make a really simple question in Spanish. “¿eres Lis?

Eres Lis.

So in the first one, ¿eres Lis?, that’s a question, because the intonation goes up. And in the second one, I’m telling her she’s Lis. And then Lis said:

So, sí, is “yes”, and she said “yo soy Lis”, so “yo” – I, “soy”, “I am”, Lis. So “eres” and “soy” are both taken from the verb “ser”. We won’t look into this verb in too much detail today because it’s an irregular verb, but it’s very important to know how to say “I am” and “you are”. And to say “I am”, is “soy”. And then I said “No, no soy Juan, soy Rob”. So to make a negative in Spanish is very easy. All you do is just say “no” before the verb. And this is “no” N-O, so we don’t pronounce it like we do in English which is “no”, it has to be a much more pure vowel sound. So “yo soy Rob”, which means “I am Rob”, and to make that negative, “no soy Rob”. So listen to this example: ¿Eres Laura?

And then Lis said…

So, the way in Spanish to say “I’m sorry” is “lo siento”, which literally means “I feel it”, so it’s a very romantic Spanish thing, “I feel your pain”, and then she said “mucho gusto” which means, it’s like “a pleasure”, but it’s something that you say to someone when you meet them for the first time.

I mean there’s lots of varieties that you can use, but “mucho gusto” is a nice easy one to use. And then I said “un placer, ¿cómo estás?”. So as an alternative to “mucho gusto” you can say “un placer”, which means “a pleasure”, so it´s another thing you’d say when you meet someone. And then I said “¿Cómo estás?”, and this is how you say “how are you?”, so it’s a very important phrase obviously. “Cómo” – “how”, “estás” – “are you”, “estás” is taken from the verb “estar”, which also means “to be”. So you have two different verbs “to be”. We won’t go into too much detail on that now, but it’s good to be aware of. So “¿cómo estás?”, “how are you?”. And then Lis said:

So, “bien”, is “good”, and “muy” is “very”. Put them together, “muy bien”, “very good”. So if you want to say that you’re very bad, which you don’t normally say when you first meet someone, you can say “muy mal”. So “bien” is “good”, “mal” is “bad”. “Muy bien”, “muy mal”. “¿Y tú?” – so obviously it’s polite to ask how someone else is. “Y tú” just means “and you?”. And finally, I said, “espectacular”, which literally means “spectacular”. Obviously it sounds a bit strange if someone asks you in English how you are and you say “spectacular”, but in Spanish it’s quite common, and it’s a nice thing to say isn’t it?

Ok, so one more time the conversation: Hola, eres Lis?

No, no soy Juan. Soy Rob.

Un placer. ¿Cómo estás?

Espectacular!

“Super”, that’s a nice alternative! And that’s really easy to remember as well. Of course you have to roll the “r” at the end of “super”. And we’ve got a couple of additional phrases for you which they use in South America. They say:

¿Qué más?, which means, well literally it means “what else”, but it’s really common isn’t it

Y ¿qué más? You can also say, “¿cómo vas? Which literally means “how are you going”. What’s another alternative?

¿Qué cuentas? That literally means “what do you say?”, which sounds very strange in English, but is a good one to use in Spanish. And then finally, there’s on which the Spanish Bugs Bunny uses, and which is pretty cool as well:

¿Qué de nuevo?

Ah sorry, so ¿Qué hay de nuevo?

So, in English, Bugs Bunny says “what’s up doc?”

And do they use that a lot?

Ah, so you you won’t sound too current if you use that now

So “¿qué hay?” means “what’s up?”, and “de nuevo” means “new”. So, what’s up that’s new?

Ok, that’s all from our first beginners from scratch series, we hope you enjoyed it, and don’t forget to check out the corresponding materials below this podcast on spanishobsessed.com. So from Rob, “hasta luego”, and from Lis