Beginner Spanish 1: The Weather

Welcome to Spanish Obsessed. You're listening to Beginners. Series 1, episode 1. I'm your co-host Rob and I'm here with Liz. Hola Liz. Hola Rob. Como estás? Muy bien, gracias. Y tú? Muy bien. So, during this series with Liz and I, we're going to teach you functional Spanish which will be useful for various situations. You'll learn useful phrases, snippets of grammar, tips and tricks to help you with your Spanish. Now, it's not a particularly structured course, so it doesn't matter if you listen to the podcast in order, but if you do want a more structured course, then head over to Spanishobsessed.com and look for our series Spanish from scratch. In the meantime, we've got a present for you. No matter where you're listening, whether it's Spotify or another podcast app or on the website, if you head over to Spanishobsessed.com forward slash go, we've got a present waiting for you there. You can get your hands on a Spanish starter pack which contains over 90 starter phrases and a link to help you learn those with flashcards. We've got a guide to the subjunctive and much more to help you in your journey towards learning Spanish. That's a freebie. So, head over to Spanishobsessed.com forward slash go, go. That's enough from me for now, so let's get straight into the episode. Buenos dias, Lies. Hola, robo, Buenos dias. Muy bien. Muchas gracias. Y tú? Muy bien, también. Muchas gracias. So, for people to get to know us a little bit better, I'm going to ask Lies for simple questions. So, see if you can understand the questions and Lies's responses so you can get to know us a little bit better. Lies, de don de edes. Yo soy de Colombia. A simple and very common question to get us started there, de don de edes means where you from. So, that edes comes from the verb "said" "se which is one of two verbs in Spanish meaning to be." So, when we're talking about where we're from, so about nationalities, we use the verb "said." They don de edes means where you from and then Lies's response was "soy de." I am from. So, two conjugations there for you. Edes and soy. They kept part de Colombia. Hopefully easy enough to follow again. De que parte, parte means pot. So, de que parte, from which pot, and Lies said de la capital Bogota. Now, an interesting thing to remember about la capital is that it's feminine. So, we know that because it's la. So, when talking about capital cities, it's la capital. Now, there is an "el" capital as well. Don't get confused with that because that means capital as in money. So, how much capital you have, etc. La capital is the capital city. Y donde estamos ahora? Y nosotros estamos en. In la Terra. Sí. Entonces estamos en Colombia. Estamos en Londres. So, I then switched from the verb "said" to "estar." This is the other verb in Spanish meaning to be. So, I said donde estamos? Where are we? Donde estamos ahora? And Lies said, "estamos en Londres." We are in London. So, to describe a location where something or someone is, we use the verb "estar." Estamos, we are. Estamos en Londres. Lies cuánto tiempo llevas en Londres. Si llevo casi siete años? Aproximadamente. Llevas siete años. Mucho tiempo. Sí. So, here's a handy verb for you, "yebar." I said to Liz, "cuanto tiempo llevas en Londres." Literally, how much time do you carry in London? And this is the way you say in Spanish. How long have you been somewhere? "Cuanto tiempo llevas en Londres? How long have you been in London?" And then the response is "yebo siete años? I carry siete años? Or I've been in London for seven years?" Y, "a quete de deicas." Sí, ahora mismo me dico a trabajar como coordinadora con un equipo de abogados en Londres. A nice way of asking someone what they do is to say "a quete de deicas." So, what do you dedicate yourself to? This is quite a nice natural Spanish way of asking someone what they do. And now Liz is going to ask me those questions. Drop y tú de Londres? Pues yo soy de Londres. Inglaterra. Tu tierra. Y cuánto tiempo llevas viviendo en Londres? llevo en Londres diez años. Yo soy de Londres, pero no he bebido siempre en Londres. Y a quete de deicas. Yo trabajo en una agencia de marketing. So, although we didn't provide all the analysis and the translations for that small part of the conversation, you can check those out in the transcript on the website, Spanishobsess.com. This is beginning as episode one, of course. And there you'll find the full conversation and the transcript as well. Complete with full explanations. Okay, now we're going to move on to talking about the weather, which is a famous topic in England. And there's something you can talk about pretty much anywhere in the world, because everywhere has weather, of course. Now the interesting thing in Spanish is that there are two verbs which are commonly used with the weather, which are. These are two of the most common verbs in Spanish. I said which literally translates as "to do" and "estad", which translates as "to be". So commonly in English it is, that's the verb to be. So when talking about the weather, we use the verbs "acere" or "estad", depending on what we're saying. So, let's give us a couple of examples. First of all, how do you even ask how's the weather? How is that the climate? So it's the same question as how are you using that verb "estad" to be. And then the weather is the climate. So how is that the climate? That's how you ask someone how's the weather. So how do you say it's hot? Asi calor. Asi calor. Now we're not using the verb "estad", we're using "acere". Asi it does calor hot. It does hot. Asi calor. It's hot. How do you say the opposite? It's cold. Asi frio. Asi frio. So the opposite of calor is frio and again we use the verb "acere". Asi calor or asi frio. How do you say it's sunny? I love this one. Asi sol. Asi sol. Again, using the verb "acere" so when it's hot, when it's cold, when it's sunny, we use the verb "acere". Asi sol. Literally that translates as "it does sun". It's sunny. Can you give us those three again? Asi calor. Asi calor. Asi frio. Asi frio. Asi sol. Asi sol. And how do we say it's raining? Which is more common. It's "ta" "jobiendo". So rain doesn't use the verb "acere". It uses the verb "estar". So just as we ask "como estar", "el clima", we now say "estar", "it is" "jobiendo". So that's the verb "raining". Now in English we say it's raining, that "i" and "g" ending is called a progressive ending or continuous. And the "yendo", which you can hear in Spanish, is similar. That's the continuous or the progressive ending to verbs. We're not going to go into huge amount of detail on that now but it's good to bear in mind that anytime you hear a verb which ends in and/or end/or we know that's the progressive ending so "està" "yoviendo" from the verb "yobeard" is raining. Now what could you say if it's not raining very hard? "està" "yoisnando" so this is quite a nice little phrase which people weren't expect from someone who's just learning Spanish "està" "yovi is nando" it's a similar construction which uses the verb "està" again and this time the verb is "yovi is nād" not a very common verb but this means "to drizzle" so "està" "yovi is nando" means "it's drizzling" and then there's an expression which you use in Colombia isn't there? When it's. I didn't even say "is it in Spain" as well okay what's that? It's a simple "espanta voz" can you explain that phrase? we try it's when it starts raining but very like kind of soft and you can't get that it's gonna pass quite quickly so just say it's just it's a silly raining kind of "espanta voz" and the word "espanta voz" means like I don't know help me how to translate yes it's scary it's actually two words put together isn't it? yeah so "espanta" means to frighten or "espantar" to frighten and then "bobos" basically translates as like "idiot" yeah so it means basically you have to be brave just to deal with like a silly rain yeah so it's a rain which frightens idiots so if it's raining not very hard you say "ah "es d'abien" is when "espanta voz" is like that yeah let's go out yeah so it's like "oh come on it's just raining a little bit we can go out" is when it's simply "espanta voz" okay let's can you give us those phrases again just one more time so listen and repeat how is that like "clima" how is that like "clima" it's just a hot it's just a hot it's just a hot it's cold it's cold it's just a hot it's raining it's raining it's raining it's raining it's just a hot it's just a hot well thank you very much thank you to you Rob and we're going to see if you do that have it it's bedot kissy so that's all from episode 1 quick episode to get you started don't forget to head over to spanishobsessed.com full slash go for your free start pack as well as to check out the accompanying materials to this podcast and find out a little bit more about spanish obsessed in the next episode you'll learn some of our new years resolutions and how to talk about what you're going to take up and stop doing whether it's a new year or you're just turning over a new leaf so we'll see you in the next episode. Hasta pronto