NIS Beginners 008 - Discutir

Hello and welcome to Inspired Beginners from Notes in Spanish. I'm Ben Curtis. I'm here with Marina D.F. and as per usual we're going to start today's episode with a little bit of revision from the last podcast. Marina what were we talking about last time round? Well we talk about shopping and how often our shopping happens. Yep we looked at lots of ways of saying how often anything happens really. But let's start with the typical question. How do you say how often? There's two key phrases here aren't they? They hit that are very very similar. What have we got? Cada cuanto? Quaso one of them? En cada cuanto tiempo. Right now these both mean how often and they're exactly the same. Okay so let's have an example for example let's say how often do you go swimming? Right just to remind you that whenever we hear Marina giving a bit of key vocab or a bit of revision with her perfect examples in Spanish she'll repeat them twice and then there'll be a gap afterwards for you to repeat them to yourself. Okay great way of keeping them fresh in your mind. So Marina the phrase was how often do you go swimming? How do you say that? Cada cuanto tiempo vas a nadar? Okay fantastic let's look at an answer for that if you just wanted to give a very simple answer saying from time to time what would you say? De vez en cuando. De vez en cuando. Let's look at another example of some of the other how often things happen words frequency words that we looked at. For example if we were going to say twice a year then we've got dos bethis alaño. Okay so we can imagine what three times a year would be but let's have an example from Marina again. What if I were to say that I went to the dentist three times a year? You went or you go? I went I go in any case it would be a complete lie because I tried to avoid going more than once a year but let's imagine for argument sake that the sentences I go to the dentist three times a year. Boi al dentista tres veces al año. Okay another one often what's the word for often Marina in Spanish? A menudo. A menudo. Right two words a menudo so an example I often travel by metro what would that be? Boi en metro a menudo. Okay boy en metro I go in the metro often a menudo. Right now today Marina and I are feeling a little bit argumentative. Fairly common. In the heat. In the heat of Madrid in summer yes it tends to get you arguing. Now Marina and I don't argue about too much these days but there are a couple of things that we do often get slightly heated about and obviously if you want to sound incredibly Spanish and incredibly good at Spanish then it's pretty useful to know how to disagree with people. So today we're going to introduce some real Spanish language for effectively disagreeing with people that you have a conversation with. I'm Marina what do we often disagree about? What's the first topic that we're going to look at? Okay we are going to look at Tipin. Tipin is very different in Spain compared to England so we often especially when we first got together we had a bit of an argument there. Well I mean because yeah often when we were sitting in a bar and we paid the bill and it came time to leave the tip and well Marina would say you don't have to leave a tip and I'd say of course you have to leave a tip and anyway you'll hear a bit more about that in a second about what our opinions are. I think you'll find out that I didn't say don't leave a tip. It's just that we leave them in a different way. Okay you see we're arguing already right so well let's look at some of the key vocabulary that you'll need later after you've heard the audio we'll have a look at some of the actual sort of key arguing phrases but we're going to introduce a bit of the vocabulary about the subject of tipping whiters so first of all Marina well we talk about people La gente I think you remember that from a previous podcast but how do you say to leave a tip? Dejar propina. Dejar propina. So that's Dejar to leave propina. A tip. Okay now we also talk about the typical lunch time set menu that people eat all over Spain every day of the week which is? During the whiters only. Are we date of course? Usually only during the week and it's harder to get. Yeah you can get it sometimes but it's not very common. So how do you say it is? The set lunch time menu. Menu del día. Menu del día. Okay that's masculine of course El menu un menu del día. Note that in the audio we will be speaking about comer and cenar. The difference between those two is comer which would be translated like to eat is when you eat lunch time but when we eat in the evening we say cenar. Okay great now also we're going to talk about percentages because this is where part of the key difference lies between how things work in Spain and England you know the percentage of tipping so percent is por ciento so how would we say marina 2 or 3 percent? 2 o 3 por ciento. 2 o 3 por ciento. I have to say that that's not the common tip in Spain that's pensopinion. Okay I tell you what let's listen to our first argument and we have another one later on today about tipping. In España in los pareds y los restaurantes la gente normalmente no deja propinas para los camareros. ¿Qué dices eso es mentira? Yo creo que es verdad por ejemplo a mediodía la gente come un menu del día y cuando come una persona un menu del día nunca deja la propina. Bueno, tiene razón que con el menu del día hay mucha gente que no deja propina pero si tú sales a comer a la carta o a cenar la gente suele dejar propina. Bueno, estoy de acuerdo que por la noche cuando la gente cena suelen dejar propina pero es una propina muy muy pequeña. Bueno es que la propina que se deja en Inglaterra es muy grande. Bueno pero no estamos hablando de Inglaterra estamos hablando de España. El problema es que tú estás acostumbrado al porcentaje de propinas en Inglaterra y en España es mucho más bajo. Pahale, por un lado tienes razón que yo estoy pensando en Inglaterra donde dejan una propina del diez por ciento pero por otro lado me parece que la propina española de dos o tres por ciento es muy baja. De todas maneras depende del servicio. Tú estás acostumbrado a dejar propina del diez por ciento independientemente de la calidad del servicio y de la calidad de la comida. Qué me dices no tienes ni idea si la comida está mala no dejo propina si el camarero es malo y me trata mal no dejo propina. Entonces es que te estás adaptando a las costumbres españolas. ¡Qué remedio! So as you can see this is something that Marina and I don't entirely agree on but sometimes we do agree and of course you know when you are having a discussion or a debate with somebody occasionally you have to give in a little bit and tell them that you do agree with them on some points or other. So Marina we've heard it before and we'll hear it again in the next bit of audio. But how do you say you're right? Literally you have reason but yeah it means you're right. The opposite of course are very important when you're having a debate. or a conversation like this is to say, "I don't agree with you." How do you say that? Sometimes it's good to present contrasting points. So in English we might say, "On the one hand, I think you're right, but on the other hand, I don't agree for such and such a reason." Now a very common way of saying this in Spanish is to use the construction board on ladle and boarder on ladle. Okay, so Marina, if we were going to say for example, well let's just tell you that the next bit of the podcast is going to be about Ben's desire to buy a motorbike. Okay, we'll tell you a bit more in a minute, but this example is connected to that. If I were to say for example, on the one hand motorbikes are quicker or faster. Marina, how do you say that? "Por un lado, las motos son más rápidas." "Por un lado, las motos son más rápidas." True, but on the other hand, this is what you'd probably say to me, on the other hand motorbikes are dangerous. How do you say that? "Por otro lado son muy peligrosas." "Por otro lado son muy peligrosas." Okay, so it's argument time, argument number two, this is something else that comes up every now and again the fact that I've just got a scooter, a Vespa, which is fantastic for getting round the tree, I agree, but I'd quite like a bigger motorbike and I've got a few reasons that I try to convince Marina with. For example, I say that I need a bigger motorbike, Marina, how am I going to say that? "Necesito una moto más grande." "Necesito una moto más grande." Well, one of the reasons I used to try and convince Marina is that it's very useful, okay, you know, for doing more shopping and things like that, big and motorbike can carry more shopping. Okay, so how would I say it's very useful? "Es muy útil." "Es muy útil." It's true that it might be useful or more useful, but I think it's very expensive. Okay, well, come on then, how'd you say it's very expensive? "Es muy cara." We're using "cara" instead of "caro" because "la moto" is feminine. Right, come on then, let's have this document. "Ven tiene un escuter una bespa en concreto y la utiliza para moverse por Madrid, pero ahora quiere cambiar su bespa por una moto más grande." "Es que necesito una moto más grande." "Que dices, tú no necesitas una moto más grande?" "No." "La bespa es suficiente para moverse por Madrid." "No, estoy de acuerdo contigo. Necesito una moto más grande porque es más segura." "Pero las velocidades en la ciudad son muy bajas." "Pero no entiendes." "Eres tú el que no entiendes. No es que necesites una moto más grande. Es que quieres una moto más grande." "Yo creo que tú no entiendes bien la situación. Una moto más grande es muy útil. Puedo llevar más cosas en la moto cuando hago las compras." "Pero si nunca vas de compras en moto." "Pale, tienes razón por un lado. Ahora nunca voy de compras en moto." "Pero por otro lado es posible que en el futuro hago más compras con la moto." "¿Qué dices? Me estás tomando el pelo." "No te estoy tomando el pelo." "Entonces supongo que ahora mismo no puedo comprar una moto nueva." "No, es muy gara." "Pelo el año que viene." "Sí." "Well, I wonder if we were to have a survey on our forum based on the last two minutes of Spanish as to whether Ben is ever going to end up with a motorbike, whether the overwhelming result would be yes or no. I think I've got an idea." "Well, there were a couple of great how to sound truly Spanish moments there in the last bit of audio you've just heard." "They really were, yeah." "Straight from Marina, who is of course Spanish, but one of them, come on then, what was it?" "Que dices." "That was the first." "What are you talking about?" "No, that the Spanish are sometimes more direct than English speaking people." "You could say that, yeah. So come on, let's have a bit of a quick repetition practice as a true Spanish direct person." "How would you say, what are you talking about?" "Que dices." "Que dices." "Scare, isn't it?" "Okay, the other one is, well you're having a laugh or you're taking the mickey." "You're taking the mickey." "Yeah, that's probably a very British experiment." "You are pulling my leg." "You're pulling my leg." "That's the one I was thinking of, but similar, you're taking the mickey." "Anyway, right, how'd you say it?" "Me estás tomando el pelo." "Me estás tomando el pelo." "Litually, you are pulling my hair." "Where I come from, we pull each other's legs, the Spanish, pull each other's hair." "But anyway, there we go." "If you don't agree with anyone or you want to say you're talking rubbish, that's two great ways of saying it." "Right, so that's nearly it for this week, so Marina, the homework giver, once again, what have you got in mind?" "Well, you can write a dialogue with two different positions about something to different points of view. I think, in this case, it's better if you take a real situation, for example, if you want to buy a bigger tele, but your wife prefers to buy, to go on a holiday, I don't know, whatever." "Just point out." "Or the other way round." "Why not?" "Just point out that this is coming from the lady who actually doesn't want to buy a bigger tele." "Yeah, well, that's life." "Okay." "It's just an example." "Okay, the other thing you can do, if you don't fancy writing it down, is to find somebody else who speaks Spanish and just have an argument." "Until them." "What are you doing?" "Well, that's it. Don't forget that you can find a worksheet covering today's episode with a translation of the dialogue, all the key vocab and some more cool Spanish, and we will be back next week." "Hasta luego." "Adiós." "Hi, it's Ben here. Just a quick message. We've got a very special free PDF report for you, our real Spanish fluency roadmap. These are the exact steps that I use to go from clunky textbook Spanish to real confidence Spanish fluency. It'll make a huge difference whatever level you're at. So you can get this wonderful free real Spanish fluency roadmap if you go to notesandspanish.com/real. That's notesandspanish.com/real spelled R-E-A-L.