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In this episode of the Café Cortado we're going to be listening to a question from Drew. Drew has question about directions.
Drew asks what the difference is between vaya todo recto and siga todo recto. Indeed, both of these phrases mean "go straight on" and they're both used in the formal form, the form you're most likely to hear if you ask for directions in a Spanish-speaking area. The word vaya comes from the verb ir, meaning "to go". Ir is an irregular verb, meaning that the different parts of the verb for "I", "you", "he", "they" etc. don't necessarily follow a regular pattern. A literal translation, then of vaya todo recto is "go straight on".
However, siga comes from the verb seguir, which literally means "to follow" or "to continue", so if you were to translate siga todo recto literally, it would mean "follow straight on", or "continue straight on". In English, there's very little difference in what "go straight on" and "continue straight on" mean - they're just two ways of saying more or less the same thing. That's an important part about learning a language: you have to accept that you can often say the same thing many ways in English, and there are likely to be similarly varied ways in the foreign language of saying the same thing. Think of the very common phrase "how are you?" There are many ways to convey the idea of asking someone how they are - "how are you?", "how's it going?", "how are things?", "how are you doing?", and so on. Similarly there are many ways to convey this same concept in Spanish: ¿cómo estás?, ¿cómo te va?, ¿cómo van las cosas?, ¿qué tal?, ¿qué tal estás?, etc., and very few of these translate word for word into the other language.
Rather than translating words I like to think of moving from one language to another as translating concepts. It's not about taking the first word and translating it into Spanish, then the second word, and so on. Rather, think about what the concept is and see if there's a phrase which means something similar in the foreign language. This way you'll begin to think conceptually and your ability to think of things to say in the foreign language will improve because you'll not be too caught up in word for word translations.
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!
