Cafe Cortado

Episode 005

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Welcome to this latest edition of the Café Cortado, the podcast where we answer your questions about the Spanish language. In this edition Burks has a question about hotel reservations.

As Burks correctly suggests, the verb "to smoke" in Spanish is indeed fumar. The English word "fume" comes from the same root. And if you wanted to say "I am smoking", you would use the form that Burks suggests, fumando: you'd say estoy fumando. We've seen this form lots of times, and in this week's Coffee Break Spanish, Kara says to the shop assistant sólo estamos mirando - "we're just looking".

It's important to note that this form of the verb in Spanish which ends in -ando for -ar verbs, or -iendo for -er or -ir verbs does translate our "-ing" ending in English, but only in certain circumstances. The most likely situation in which you'll find the -ando or -iendo form is when it's combined with the verb estar: in this situation it would mean "to be doing something". For example, we've heard estamos mirando, "we are looking"; estoy fumando, "I am smoking", and we can add to this list: Carlos está cantando - "Carlos is singing"; los niños están jugando - "the children are playing", and so on.

However, it's very common in Spanish - and indeed in other languages - to translate the "-ing" form by the infinitive. Think of the phrase "I like singing". The best way to translate this into Spanish is by saying me gusta cantar, ie. using the infinitive. We don't say me gusta cantando* - this makes no sense in Spanish.

So, when you ask for a non-smoking room in a hotel, you'd talk about una habitación de no fumar, or in some parts of Latin America, un cuarto de no fumar. Note the use of the infinitive, fumar, in this phrase.

Burks, I hope this answers your question, and I'd like to say muchas gracias for sending your question in in Spanish - ¡enhorabuena! - congratulations: ¡hablas muy bien!

That's all for this edition of the Café Cortado. Don't forget to visit the website at www.thecafecortado.com, and if you've not yet subscribed to our main Spanish language podcast, visit www.coffeebreakspanish.com. We'll be in touch with this week's contributor to deliver the three free guides for the Coffee Break Spanish series. If you'd like to earn your own free guides, or if you have a question about Spanish then listen to the numbers coming at the end of the show. Tune in again next time - ¡hasta pronto!

Episode 004

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You're listening to the Café Cortado, the podcast where we answer your questions about the Spanish language. In this week's show we'll be hearing from Juliet in London who has a question which puzzles many learners of Spanish: just which word for "you" is the correct one?

Juliet is quite right: there are different words for "you" in Spanish. In English there's just the one - if I'm addressing my wife, my friend or my son I use the word "you"; and if I'm addressing my boss, or my mother-in-law, or indeed a random person in the street, I still use the word "you". If I'm speaking to a group of people, I also use the word "you". While this perhaps makes English easy, it makes life quite difficult for learners of other languages where there are different 'types' of "you"!

In the standard form of Spanish, there are two basic forms of "you" in the singular. If you're talking to one person who is a friend, a colleague, a family member, someone you know well, or someone younger than you, then you use the word tú. If you want to be more polite, for example if you're speaking to someone to whom you wish to be respectful then you can use the word usted. Without wishing to complicate things, there is another informal form used in certain parts of the Spanish-speaking world. In Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, and in some parts of Central America, you may hear the word vos used instead of tú. We won't go into too much detail about vos: as a learner you'll be understood perfectly if you can use tú and usted in the correct situation!

So much for the singular forms. In Latin America, things are very straightforward in the plural. The word ustedes is used for "you" when you're talking to a group of people. However, in Spain, things are a little more complicated: there's another form which is used for informal situations. The word vosotros is used to speak directly to a group of friends. If you're speaking to a group of females you would use vosotras. For example, if you say "I'm leaving, what about you?", you'd say me voy, ¿y vosotros? (or ¿y vosotras? for a group of females). In Latin America this would simply be me voy, ¿y ustedes?

It's also important to mention that since Spanish has different forms of the verb for different people, you need to use the correct form of the verb corresponding to whichever "you" you're talking about. Remember that the pronouns tú, usted, vosotros, vosotras and ustedes - and indeed vos - are only used for emphasis or to make it clear who is being spoken about. Consider the following examples. Each of these sentences mean "do you want to dance with me?", but each refers to a different "you":

¿(tú) quieres bailar conmigo?
¿(usted) quiere bailar conmigo?
¿(vosotros) queréis bailar conmigo?
¿(vosotras) queréis bailar conmigo?
¿(ustedes) quieren bailar conmigo?

In each situation the pronoun is optional. Note the different verb forms which change, depending on which "you" is being spoken about.

This is probably all sounding a bit complicated, and I hope I've not put you off learning more Spanish, Juliet! You will become more used to all of these forms as you learn more Spanish. And if it helps, there are plenty of other languages with even more forms for "you": in Japanese or Malay you have to really think hard before you decide which word to choose! Thanks for sending in your question, Juliet!

That's all for this edition of the Café Cortado. Don't forget to visit the website at www.thecafecortado.com, and if you've not yet subscribed to our main Spanish language podcast, visit www.coffeebreakspanish.com. We'll be in touch with this week's contributor to deliver the three free guides for the Coffee Break Spanish series. If you'd like to earn your own free guides, or if you have a question about Spanish then listen to the numbers coming at the end of the show. Tune in again next time - ¡hasta pronto!

Episode 003

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We're heading to Canada in this edition of the Café Cortado: Rob in Calgary has a question about using me gustaría and quisiera.

Rob is, in fact, spot on when he compares these two constructions. Let's look at me gustaría. We've already learned me gusta which means "I like". It can be combined with nouns or verbs, for example me gusta España, "I like Spain", or me gusta aprender español, "I like learning Spanish" or "I like to learn Spanish", depending on the context. This construction using me gusta is the present tense: it's how you talk about what you like doing in general situations. Just like other verbs, me gusta can be used in different tenses. In English we say "I used to like..." or we sometimes hear children saying "I will like coffee when I'm older". Me gustaría is a different tense of me gusta. In fact it's what is called the conditional tense, or more precisely the conditional mood. It's translated as "I would like..." and it can be used in phrases such as "I would like Spanish grammar if it weren't so difficult". Of course that's just an example - Spanish grammar isn't really difficult!

This construction, me gustaría, meaning "I would like", can also be used in the situation of asking for something: "I would like a glass of wine", and it's almost as if you were going to continue by saying, "if it's not too much trouble".

Let's consider quisiera now. As Rob suggests, quisiera comes from the verb querer, meaning "to want", or in some cases, "to love". I'm not sure if you want to know which "tense" quisiera is - in fact it's the imperfect subjunctive but I don't think we'll go into that just now! So quisiera is another way to express that you'd like something, eg. quisiera un café, "I would like a coffee", although this literally means "I would want a coffee".

Now, is there a difference? Well, I've been doing some research to answer this question, and I think that my gut instincts are proving correct. Of course, the usage will probably vary slightly from country to country. Firstly, it's important to say that if you're in a bar and you say to the waiter or waitress, quisiera un café or me gustaría un café, there is no doubt whatsoever that the waiter or waitress will know that you'd like a coffee and they'll head off to fetch it. However, it could be said that if you use me gustaría then this is perhaps slightly more rhetorical: "I would like a coffee ... but I'm not necessarily going to have one". Whereas if you use quisiera un café, well it means that you want your coffee and you're not going to take "no" for an answer! Of course, if you want to avoid any possible misunderstanding you could just be blunt and say quiero un café, "I want a coffee"!

So, Rob. Thanks for your question. I hope this has helped!

That's all for this edition of the Café Cortado. Don't forget to visit the website at www.thecafecortado.com, and if you've not yet subscribed to our main Spanish language podcast, visit www.coffeebreakspanish.com. We'll be in touch with this week's contributor to deliver the three free guides for the Coffee Break Spanish series. If you'd like to earn your own free guides, or if you have a question about Spanish then listen to the numbers coming at the end of the show. Tune in again next time - ¡hasta pronto!

Episode 002

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This episode of the Café Cortado will concentrate on numbers. Alejandro is looking for some help with numbers and the pronunciation of numbers.

We have covered numbers in the Coffee Break Spanish podcast - back in episode 6 we learned to count from 1 to 10 and then we dealt with larger numbers in episode 12. We'll go through the pronunciation of the numbers on this episode of the Cortado, and I'll do this first using the pronunciation of Spain, then using Latin American pronunciation. Of course by now most of our listeners will realise that there is one major difference between Latin American and Spanish pronunciation, and that is the pronunciation of the letters c and z.

Let's listen to the numbers from one to twenty, first in Peninsular Spanish and then in Latin American Spanish:

uno dos tres cuatro cinco seis siete ocho nueve diez

once doce trece catorce quince dieciseis diecisiete dieciocho diecinueve veinte

Hopefully that has helped you, Alejandro, and hopefully this has been a useful review for our other listeners.

A good way to practise your numbers is by giving yourself an arithmetic quiz in your head. You'll need some other words for this too. Let's learn "add", "subtract", "multiply" and "divide".

To say 2 + 3 = 5 in Spanish you'd say dos más tres son cinco, so más, which literally means "more" is used for "add" or "plus". You always say son for "equals", even if the answer to the sum is "one"!

To say 5 - 1 = 4 in Spanish you'd say cinco menos uno son cuatro, using the word menos which literally means "less". Indeed, we recently covered the phrase más o menos, meaning "more or less".

To say 2 x 3 = 6 in Spanish you'd say dos por tres son seis. The word por here is one of those tricky words which can be translated in many ways. We'll be covering it in future editions of the Café Cortado.

Finally, to say 8 ÷ 4 = 2 in Spanish you'd say ocho dividido por cuatro son dos. You can also say dividido entre, although dividido por is more common in Spain.

That's all for this edition of the Café Cortado. Don't forget to visit the website at www.thecafecortado.com, and if you've not yet subscribed to our main Spanish language podcast, visit www.coffeebreakspanish.com. We'll be in touch with this week's contributor to deliver the three free guides for the Coffee Break Spanish series. If you'd like to earn your own free guides, or if you have a question about Spanish then listen to the numbers coming at the end of the show. Tune in again next time - ¡hasta pronto!