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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!
