Let's stop by the kitchen of the Di Carlo mansion, setting of preparations for the big gala in Muñeca Brava. The maids are very excited. They want to get a detailed description of how Mili looked as she made her Cinderella-like debut. Notice that Socorrito uses the imperfect tense of both ver (to look) and bajar (to go down, to lower, to descend) when she asks:

Contame, contame, ¿cómo se la veía cuando bajaba de la escalera?
Tell me, tell me, how did she look as she was walking down the staircase?
Caption 1, Muñeca Brava - Episodio 41 (La Fiesta) - Part 2

If you've ever heard anything at all about the imperfect tense, it's that it applies to past actions that are not completed or that are ongoing. We see that quite clearly above in the case of bajaba; Mili "was walking down," an action that was ongoing at the time. However, another rule of the imperfect, one less bandied about, also comes into play here: the imperfect is employed when describing two or more simultaneous past actions. Socorrito wants to know how Mili "looked" (using the imperfect veía) as (at the same point in time) she was going down the stairs. 

With her usual enthusiasm, Mariposa definitely puts them in the moment when she answers:

Socorrito, ¡no sabe lo que era! Parecía una princesa.
Socorrito, you can't imagine! She looked like a princess.
Caption 2, Muñeca Brava - Episodio 41 (La Fiesta) - Part 2

 There is yet another well-documented use of the imperfect that we can cite here: its use to "set the scene" or provide background information, especially at the beginning of a larger story. She uses the imperfect era (from ser, to be) when she says ¡no sabe lo que era! which literally translates to "you don't know how it was!" And she employs parecía (she looked like), which is an imperfect conjugation of parecer (to appear as/to look like/to seem like). Mariposa is setting the stage for the fairy tale taking place in the ballroom, and doing so in much the same way one would recite an actual fairy tale (which is no surprise if you remember that Muñeca Brava is a retelling of the Cinderella story).

The start of your average ghost tale or mystery story makes a good illustration of using the imperfect to paint a background picture:

Era una noche oscura y tormentosa, llovía y unos pájaros cantaban a lo lejos.
It was a dark and stormy night. It was raining and a few birds were singing from a distance.

More well-known to the average student of Spanish is the use of the imperfect to refer to a habitual or repeated action in the past. We saw an example of this in an earlier episode of Muñeca Brava when Milena says to Louise:

Sí, antes nos veíamos siempre.
Yes, we always used to see each other.
Caption 58, Muñeca Brava - La Apuesta - Part 11  

Y muchas veces la gente se confundía.
And several times people would get confused.
Caption 32, David Bisbal - Making of Premonición Live - Part 5

The other simple past tense in Spanish (called "simple" because its conjugations are only one word long) is known as preterite and is used for past actions that are completed and non-habitual. We find an example in a recent music video from The Krayolas:

Cuando yo la vi por primera vez me enamoré en un dos por tres.
When I saw her for the first time I fell in love with her instantly.
Captions 1-2, The Krayolas - Little Fox

The singer uses the preterite vi (saw) instead of the imperfect veía (was seeing/used to see) because he is talking about a specific, completed instance of laying eyes on someone.

¿Hombres? Pero mirá que sos cínica, Martita, ¿eh?
"Men? But you're quite shameless Martita, aren't you?"
[caption 12, La muñeca brava - la apuesta - part 12]

Pero no lo hace de mala, eh. De bruta que es, lo hace.
"But she doesn't do it because she's mean. She does it because she's just stupid."
[caption 16, La muñeca brava - la apuesta - part 12]

Mili is having it out with her fellow domestica, Marta, in La Muñeca brava, La apuesta, part 12. Mili calls Marta cínica and bruta. But Marta doesn’t look like a "brute" and we really don’t know her philosophical affiliations. So, what gives?

The words bruto and cínico share Latin roots with their English cousins “brute” and “cynical,” but they don’t mean exactly the same thing. As a matter of fact, they usually mean something else when used in Spanish. If you look at how we translated these words, you will find “stupid” for bruta, and “shameless” for cínica.

Both are adjectives that, when applied to human beings, can also be nouns. No seas bruta or bruto translates into English as “Don’t be stupid” or “[…] dense,” the idea being “as stupid or dense as an animal, a ‘brute.’ ” In Spanish, on the other hand, if you want to call someone a “brute,” you’d say he's an animal (“animal”) or bestia (“beast”): Ese animal quiso propasarse con mi prima. (“That brute tried to go too far with my cousin.”)

In English, “cynical” usually refers to a person who believes in nothing or is generally distrustful of people. “That critic is a real cynic. He never likes anything!” But for this critic to be cínico in Spanish, he would have another quality entirely: Ese critico es un verdadero cínico. Escribió una buena reseña de la obra sólo porque la actriz principal es su amante. “That critic has no shame. He wrote a good review of the play only because the leading lady is his lover.”

There is a Yiddish word, frequently used in English, that nails cínico right on the head: chutzpah. In Spanish it only has the negative sense, though, which according to Leo Rosten is “gall, brazen nerve, effrontery”. That’s the Spanish cínico in a nutshell. “Talk about chutzpah, the nerve of that guy!” ¡Qué cínico!

Notes:
Bruto and "brute" both have a shared root in the Latin "brutus" ("heavy, dull, stupid," later came to mean "associated with lower animals/beasts"). The English "brute" tends to associate more with the physicality aspect (strong yet not graceful) while the Spanish bruto tends to associate more with the mentality aspect (simple minded, ignorant, stupid), but there does exist some crossover in both languages.

Similarly, the Spanish cínico does at times take on a meaning very similar to the meaning we usually ascribe to "cynical" in English, and the reverse is also true. Their shared ancestry goes even deeper than the Latin "cynic," all the way back to the Greek "Kunikas."

For further reading on cínico:
An excellent and very interesting deeper look at cínico and cynical:
http://life-in-translation.blogspot.com/2004/12/cynical-about-dictionaries.html

An expat in Chile discovers the cínico / cynical difference the hard way:
http://cachandochile.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/cynical-or-cinico/

Sí, pero mi poeta interno está completamente agotado.
Yes, but my internal poet is completely exhausted.
[caption 33, Romeo y Julieta - Episode 59 – part 4]

Romeo's school chum Dante has an acute problem with his inner poet. Listen to what he says: Sí, pero mi poeta interno está completamente agotado. “Yes, but my inner poet is all used up.” If you check the English subtitle, it says “exhausted,” which means the same thing, although it is a bit more literary.

Agotado ("used up," "tired out," "exhausted," or even “out of print,” when referring to a book) is the past participle of the verb agotar, which you may recall we discussed when Belinda "ran out of" hope in her song Bella Traición. Agotar, literally, means “to extract all the liquid contained in a recipient,” or, in other words, "to squeeze to the very last drop."

The root of agotar is the noun gota, which means “drop,” as in una gota de agua (a drop of water). Perhaps you remember our friend David, a.k.a. Doctor Guacuco, when he prepared fresh clams for us?

Le echamos una gota de limón. Una gota de picante...
We add a drop of lemon. A drop of hot sauce...
[captions 11-12, Doctor Guacuco - Uno]

Agotar, the verb, when not discussing things like lemons and limes, is commonly employed in a figurative way, like when a mother scolds her child:

No me agotes la paciencia.
Don’t try my patience. [Don't make my patience run out.]

Or when something is no longer available:

Se agotaron las existencias de Tamiflu.
The supplies of Tamiflu ran out.

Los boletos para el concierto de Luis Miguel se agotaron en menos de una hora.
The tickets to the Luis Miguel concert sold out in less than an hour.

Ese libro está agotado.
That book is out of print.

Or when there are no more ideas:

Hemos agotado todas las posibilidades.
We have exhausted all the possibilities.

Or even when a person has run out of energy:

¡Estoy agotado!
“I’m exhausted!” in the sense of “I’m bushed” or “I’m tired out.”

So Dante's inner poet is exhausted, it's all used up: se agotó. Too bad. The good thing is that what can be emptied can always be refilled. For that, he needs only inspiración, and from the looks of the young ladies that he surrounds himself with, that won’t be hard to get: No se le agotarán las oportunidades. (“His opportunities will never dry up.”)

Dime, por favor, quién me mandó quererte.
Tell me, please, who told me to love you.
[caption 1, Romeo y Julieta - Episode 59 - part 5]

Romeo wants to know who in the world asked him to love Julieta: Dime, por favor, quién me mandó quererte.  "Tell me, please, who told me to love you." It's a rhetorical question. Nobody asked him to love her, so why should he?

Perhaps you are familiar with the verb mandar, meaning "to send." Many Spanish learners (and even many native speakers) are likely to be tempted to translate quién me mandó quererte as "who sent me to love you." But there is another meaning of mandar, which is "to order" or "to tell" (someone to do something), and this is the meaning that Spanish grammarians inform us comes into play when the construction is mandar + infinitive.

A Pedro lo mandé traer un litro de leche.
I told Pedro to bring a liter of milk.

If Romeo had wanted to say "Tell me who sent me to love you," he would have had to put an a before the infinitive, Dime quién me mandó a quererte. The construction mandar a + infinitive means "to send" (someone to do something).

A Pedro lo mandé a traer un litro de leche.
I sent Pedro to bring [back] a liter of milk.

Since the meanings are so close, it is only natural that in many parts of the Spanish-speaking world people use mandar and mandar + a indistinctly. In other words, they no longer differentiate between the two. Something similar is happening with deber and deber + de, remember? But it is a good idea to learn the rule while understanding that it doesn't always hold up. Like many other things having to do with rules and life!

Aleks Syntek has a real problem. He sings:

Yo no sé qué sucedió
I don’t know what happened
[Aleks Syntek - Intocable - Caption 1]

There are various words and phrases one can use in Spanish to say that something “happens.” The most common verb is pasar. Aleks could have sung Yo no sé qué pasó, and nobody would have blinked. If you saw a friend’s dog lying motionless with his tongue hanging out, you would probably ask:

¿Qué le pasó a tu perro?
“What happened to your dog?”

If you said:

¿Qué le sucedió a tu perro?, it would mean the same thing but it would sound a tad literary. They are both great words, but it’s always a good idea to use the most common word first (pasar) and save the less-used word as a synonym (suceder).

Be careful, though. Suceder does not only mean “to happen.” The same goes for pasar. Take this sentence, for example:

Benedicto sucedió a Juan Pablo en el trono papal.
“Benedicto succeeded John Paul on the papal throne.”

Here sucedió means “succeeded” in the sense of “to come next after” or “to replace”. But it does not mean “to be successful”. To say this in Spanish, you would use the phrase tener éxito:

¡Yo nunca tengo éxito!
I never succeed.

Remember that éxito has nothing to do with an "exit." “Exit” is salida.

Pasar can mean several things as well. In the imperative, it means “Go ahead!”

¡Pase por aquí, por favor!
“Come [or Go] this way, please!”

And when you can’t tolerate or put up with something or someone, when you can’t “suffer” him or her, the verb pasar is also a good choice:

A ese tonto no lo paso.
I don't stand that fool.

The verb pasar has dozens of meanings but let’s wrap this up: it can also mean “to swallow.” In this sense one usually uses it reflexively. If a child procrastinates at the table, with food in his mouth, his mother might raise her voice, saying:

¡Ya pásatelo!
“Swallow it already!”

Without the reflexive particle te, it would mean “Pass it over!” or “Pass it on!”, which is not the same thing.

So, now you know what happened, lo que pasó or lo que sucedió. But Aleks Syntek is still out of the loop… Poor  guy!

When it’s over, it’s over. It’s like in Aleks Syntek’s song Intocable (“Untouchable”), where the poor guy was dumped and ends up consoling himself by singing

Debo salir adelante
I must move on
[Aleks Syntek - Intocable - Caption 6]

In Spanish, when we want to express an obligation or a responsibility, we use the verb deber, properly conjugated of course, followed by the infinitive of the verb denoting the action that we must carry out.

Debo hacer mi tarea.
I must do my homework.

"Deber + infinitive" tends to imply a sense of *internal* obligation, whereas "tener que + infinitive," which is extremely common and very close in meaning, tends to convey a sense of *external* obligation.

So any time you want to express a sense of responsibility or obligation, especially one that stems of an internal sense of duty, just conjugate the verb deber and then add the infinitive of the action verb.

Sé que no será fácil pero debo confesarle la verdad.

The dictionary tells us that the verb "merecer" means "to deserve."    No merezco algo así. "I don't deserve something like this."   But songstress Julieta Venegas does not believe that living "deserves the pain" but rather that living "is worth it."   Es contigo, mi vida, con quien puedo sentir que merece la pena vivir.
It's with you, dear, with whom I can feel that life is worth living.
Captions 7-8, Julieta Venegas: El Presente

If you've ever been to Spain, you know that ¿Vale? (OK?) or Vale. (OK.) is slang that is thrown around a lot amongst Spaniards. ¿Vale?

No sé quién irá a ver este video...
I don't know who will watch this video...
caption 11: Sevilla, España > Porteñas

 How would we treat quién if Julia were to have made her statement positive?

  Yo sé quién irá a ver este video...
I know who will watch this video...

As it turns out, an accent is still required, even though most English speakers would not consider this an indirect question. You might look at this as a case where an indirect question is present, but it is being answered. The highly respected María Moliner dictionary calls this type of usage aclaratoria (explanatory). Note that there is still no noun or pronoun present to which quién is referring, so it is not behaving as a relative pronoun.

Like other interrogative pronouns, quién also retains the tilde when used in exclamatory way. (You will notice that these "quién" exclamations don't translate to English literally.)

¡Quién pudiera tener tus ojos!
If I only had your eyes!

¡Quién te escuchara todas las bobadas que estás diciendo!
If only the rest of the world could hear all the stupid things you are saying!

So, are there cases where quien doesn't relate to a nearby noun or pronoun, but still doesn't take an accent? Yes, when the "who" refers to some non-specific person, and so is taking on the role of "indefinite pronoun."

Quien mucho habla, no tiene nada que decir.
The person/a person who speaks a lot has nothing to say.

In this same vein, the phrase como quien means "like a person who" or "like someone who," sometimes best translated into English with "as if he/she [were someone he/she is not]":

Él contestó el interrogatorio como quien nunca hubiera conocido a la víctima.
He answered the interrogation like someone who [as if he (was someone who)] never had met the victim.

And, in another "indefinite" role, quien can also be used in place of nadie que (nobody that / nobody who) in phrases like this one:

No hay quien me detenga.
There is not anybody who can stop me. / There is nobody who can stop me.
[In English we can't have the double negative]

Poor Mili! She's caught between scheming Ivo and his grandmother, who have cooked up a plan to turn her from un desastre into a more refined woman. When Mili protests to the grandmother, she takes Ivo's side:

Mi nieto tiene razón. Vos sos una muchacha en estado... digamos... casi salvaje.
My grandson is right. You're a girl in a state that is... let's say... almost savage.
[captions 62-63: Muneca Brava, La Apuesta part 6]

While tiene razón literally means "has reason," it is best translated as "is right."

Here's another example of tener + razón

Juan tenía razón, necesitábamos mejores atacantes.
Juan was right, we needed better forwards [soccer].

Sometimes you will see tener + la razón. The meaning is the same: "to be right."

En lo que respecta a mi casa, mi esposa cree que siempre tiene la razón.
As far as my house goes, my wife believes that she is always right.

But what if you literally want to say "he has reason," as in this example?

He has reason to believe Annie will get an A.
(perhaps she is smart, she got an A last semester, the teacher likes her, etc.)

In this case we want to employ either the phrase "tener razones para" or "tener motivos para":

Él tiene razones para creer que Annie va a sacar un A.
He has reason to believe that Annie is going to get an A.

Él tiene motivos para creer Annie va a sacar un A.
He has reason to believe that Annie is going to get an A.

Also, as we touched upon in a previous lesson, "tener por qué" also means "to have reason," but you will find it used mostly in the negative sense:

Él no tiene por qué creer que Annie va a sacar un A.
He has no reason to believe that Annie is going to get an A.

No tengo por qué quejarme.

No tengo por qué contarte mis secretos.

On rare occasions, you will come across "tener por qué" used in the positive sense:

Ellos tienen por qué luchar.
They have reason to struggle.

To tell the tale of Speedy, A.B. Quintanilla starts, "Érase una vez" -- which means "Once upon a time." Hearing these words, listeners instantly know we are entering fairy-tale territory. "Érase una vez" or  "érase que se era" or "había una vez" are all ways to set up a fictional tale in Spanish, just like "once upon a time" in English. It's a fairy-tale convention.

Another convention we're all familiar with is the ending "And they lived happily ever after." In Spanish, you may hear: "Vivieron felices y comieron perdices" -- which a more literal translation would render "they lived happily and ate partridges." You see, partridges (perdices) are considered delicacies, so eating them signifies the good life. Plus, it rhymes.

Let's end on another rhyming note:

Y colorín colorado
este cuento se ha acabado
And that´s the end of that
[or]
Snip, snap snout,
this tale's told out.
 
So to sign off this lesson, let's just say:

Y colorín colorado
esta lección se ha acabado.

¡Órale, arriba, epa, epa, arriba, ándale!"

Sound familiar? Yes, it's the fastest mouse in all Mexico -- Speedy Gonzales! -- and he stars in A.B. Quintanilla's music video. But instead of racing around rescuing people, Speedy is tending to a broken heart in this fun video. Listen in:
 
Él nunca le teme a nada,
pero esta vez sí lloró.
He is never afraid of anything,
but this time he did cry.
Captions 12-3, A.B. Quintanilla > Speedy Gonzales

Poor Speedy! It takes a lot to make this brave mouse cry. In fact, Speedy's fans might not believe their fearless hero would actually shed tears, so the song adds an emphatic "sí" to get the point across. With "sí" placed in front of the verb "lloró", the sentence means "...he DID cry" (with the stress on the verb) or "... he did indeed cry." Believe it or not: He did.

As you know, "sí" with an accent over the "i" means "yes," as in the affirmative answer to a question. But "sí" is also widely used in Spanish to add emphasis to an assertion. In English, we make affirmations with "indeed," the auxiliary verb "do" and/or by stressing the verb.

Let's look at some examples to clarify.
 
Yo sí estoy trabajando en el proyecto final.
I AM working on the final project.
 
Carlos sí puede tocar la armónica.
Carlos can indeed play the harmonica.
 
A Nancy sí le gusta Miguel.
Nancy DOES like Miguel.

Note that the emphatic "sí" appears just before the verb in these affirmative statements in Spanish. In the English equivalents, we might stress the verb -- as indicated in all caps above.

For more examples of the emphatic sí at work, we turn to our friends in Mexico City. Yes, Amigos D.F. are back, talking about kidnappings. Listen in:

.. pues sí ha habido mucha inseguridad...
... well, there HAS been a lot of insecurity...

...O sea, como que sí hay interés de parte de las autoridades
... I mean, it's like there IS interest from the authorities

Yo sí tengo la esperanza que se reduzc'... se reduzcan este tipo de eventos
I DO have the hope that these types of events will be red'... will be reduced...
Captions 6, 32, 37, Amigos D.F. > El secuestrar

When you listen to native Spanish speakers make affirmations -- like the ones above -- note that there's no stress placed on the verbs themselves. It's a rookie mistake for Spanish students to say something like "Yo sí TENGO la esperanza..." when native speakers would simply let the "sí" make the emphasis for them.

In addition to Dutch, Papiamento, and English, most Arubans can also speak perfect Spanish, as Landa Henríquez attests to by singing it with ease. The island has deep seated and ongoing ties with Venezuela, only fourteen miles to the south, and neighboring Colombia. So it should be of little surprise that Landa peppers her song with a common Colombian expression.

Ya sabes, te vas de Barranquilla y te pierdes tu silla.
You know, you leave Barranquilla and you lose your chair.
Caption 30, Landa Henríquez > Mujer Cuarenta

The expression is actually a take on a popular saying from Spain which goes Él que se va a Sevilla, pierde su silla ("He who leaves Sevilla, loses his chair"). Either way, the meaning is the same: if you're not vigilent, you'll lose what is yours.

There is another way to express the same sentiment, and we hear it in a cumbia song playing at that disco that Milagros and Gloria have snuck out of the orphanage to visit in Muñeca Brava. 

Camarón que se duerme se lo lleva la corriente.
 The shrimp that sleeps is taken away by the current.
Caption 30, Muñeca Brava > Pilot > Part 6

American English also expresses this idea with an analogy to sleep: "You snooze, you lose."

Another interesting phrase to tumble from Landa Henríquez's lips is:

La mujer a los cuarenta, ya sabes está requete-buena.
A woman in her forties, you know she's very hot.
[Caption 25, Landa Henríquez > Mujer Cuarenta]

"Estar buena" is "to be hot," as in sexually attractive. It's got little to do with the temperature on those sweltering Caribbean nights. (Meanwhile, the sand might be hot under foot, but you'd use "estar caliente" to describe that.) But what's "requete"? According to the authoritative Diccionario de la Lengua Española (by the Real Academia Española), "requete-," "rete-" or "re-" are prefixes that intensify the meaning of what follows -- like "very" in English, or "muy" in Spanish

Celebrating women of a certain age, Mujer Cuarenta is an invitation to party, dance, fool around and enjoy life, Caribbean style. Listen in:

Baila y canta y vive sin pena, si te enamoras, en hora buena.
Dance and sing and live without worries, if you fall in love, good for you.
[Caption 8, Landa Henríquez > Mujer Cuarenta]

"En hora buena" literally means "at a good hour," but it's understood as a congratulations -- as in, "Good for you!" or "Congrats!" You hear this in Spain and throughout Latin America -- from the Caribbean coasts down to the Southern Cone.

When it's used as a noun, "enhorabuena" is usually written as one word. For example:

Todo el mundo quería darle la enhorabuena después del partido.
"Everybody wanted to offer congratulations to him after the match."

But as an interjection, you'll see both "en hora buena" and "enhorabuena" (both are correct). Here are a few more examples:

En hora buena, Elena, tu hija es hermosa.
"Congratulations, Elena, your daughter is beautiful."

¡Llegaste! ¡Enhorabuena!
"You arrived! Congratulations / At last!"

Queremos que Julio venga enhorabuena, porque ya han pasado dos semanas.
"We want Julio to finally come back, because it's already been two weeks."

Note that in the last example above, "enhorabuena" is an adverb, modifying the verb "venir." In this usage, "enhorabuena" comes closer to its literal meaning of "at a good hour."

Meanwhile, Spanish has two other congratulatory interjections: "Felicidades" and "Felicitaciones." There's some overlap between the three words, but "enhorabuena" and "felicitaciones" tend to congratulate accomplishments or achievements while "felicidades" might celebrate an occasion like a birthday. For proficient Spanish readers, there's an interesting discussion here.

There's also a bit of lunfardo

-- that is, slang particular to Argentina and Uruguay -- that slips into the Biography of our Uruguayan-born, Argentinean-raised Natalia. For example, listen to this line:

Yo creo que tuvieron una relación muy linda, muy intensa, muy... muy copada
I think that they had a very nice relationship, very intense, very... very cool
Caption 25-6, Natalia Oreiro > Biografía > 10

The adjective copado/a is translated as cool, but what does it mean exactly? As in English slang, cool can be hard to capture. "Cool!" can mean "great!" (or "chévere," "guay" or even "chido" in Mexico). A cool kid could be laid-back or up on the latest trends (or "en la onda"). He or she could also be someone who helps his friends ("genial" or "macanudo" in Latin America). So, what is "una relación copada" trying to convey? Well, the relationship wasn't cool in the sense of temperature, obviously. It wasn't laid-back if it was also "very intense" ("muy intensa"). That leaves us with the kind of cool that's great ("genial"). There are a number of lunfardo dictionaries online with different shades of the meanings of copado. Cool?

In the latest installment of Natalia Oreiro's Biography, we learn more about the young actress and singer's accomplishments. For a vocabulary boost, let's listen to some of those sweet words of success.

In the very first line, we hear:

En muy pocos años, Natalia Oreiro logró convertirse en una auténtica diva de la televisión y de la música pop.
In just a few years Natalia Oreiro managed to become a true television and pop music diva.
[Captions 01-2, Natalia Oreiro > Biografía > 10]

"Logró," past tense of the verb "lograr," should sound familiar to our devoted subscribers: In videos Yabla posted during the campaign of the current President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, we heard the verb "lograr," oh, six or seven times

in less than five minutes of tape. The verb means "to achieve," to obtain," "to manage" or "to succeed in." As with the English words "achieve" or "succeed in," the Spanish "lograr" implies that there was a purpose or goal in mind and, further, it also implies effort. So, note that Natalia Oreiro quickly succeeded in becoming a big star -- which was not only her aim all along, but something she put a lot of work into.
 
[Usage note: If you're wondering what to say at a graduation ceremony or at the end of a marathon in the Spanish-speaking world: "¡Felicidades! ¡Lo lograste!" ("Congratulations! You did it!") usually does the trick.]

An approximate synonym for "lograr" is "ganar," which has several shades of meaning -- including "to win," "to gain" or "to earn." In our new Natalia Oreiro video, a few lines later, we hear that her show was a winner (un ganador):

"Muñeca Brava" ganó en dos ocasiones consecutivas el Martín Fierro a mejor novela.
"Muñeca Brava" won the Martín Fierro award for best soap opera two consecutive times.
[Caption 14, Natalia Oreiro > Biografía > 10]

Note that one may, for example, win a prize (ganar un premio) with hard work and talent, win the election (ganar las elecciones) with popular ideas or win the lottery (ganar la lotería) by pure chance. To clarify that something was won with intention, you may hear "logró ganar" which means "managed to win" or "succeeded in winning." For some context, check the sports pages for a story of a deserving team that managed to win (logró ganar) an important game or match.

Keeping following the beautiful Ms. Oreiro and you'll encounter more sweet words of success. For now, we'll leave you with two more lines from Part 10 of our Biography video:

Natalia había superado sus sueños
Natalia had surpassed her dreams 
[Caption 17, Natalia Oreiro > Biografía > 10]

 

Muñeca BrCon su música, Natalia había conquistado mercados alreadedor del mundo
With her music, Natalia had conquered markets around the world
[Caption 29, Natalia Oreiro > Biografía > 10]

Over in Salamanca, Spain, we hear some poetry as we contemplate the statue of Fray Luis de León. Maybe we were thirsty at the time, but in one line, we were interested to hear:

...a exprimir aquellos años...
...to squeeze those years...
Caption 25, Francisco Pérez > Fray Luis de León

What would thirst have to do with our snippet above? Well, asking for "exprimido" -- which means "squeezed" -- is the best way to order fresh-squeezed orange juice.  The verb "exprimir" has three main meanings in Spanish: 1) To squeeze, 2) To wring (as in wringing out clothing), and 3) To exploit (as in squeezing or wringing all that's possible out of workers, for example).

Related to "exprimir" at the root is "imprimir," which means, 1) To print (as in printing out pages of a document), 2) to stamp or to impress, and 3) To give (as in to transmit or pass on to). Here are some examples.

Para imprimir, hacer clic aquí
To print, press here

Vamos a comprar unos diarios impresos. Estoy harto de leer por Internet.
Let's buy some printed newspapers. I'm sick of reading online.

Colombia is famous for growing and exporting a product that some people around the world are hopelessly addicted to. Yes, rich Colombian coffee is what we're talking about. In the first installment of this series of videos on Colombia's coffee industry, we get a guided tour of a storehouse for the coffee beans.

"La Bodega," is the title of this video tour, because "bodega" is the word for the coffee beans' "warehouse." It's interesting that "bodega" has its own entry in English dictionaries as a wine shop, a barroom, a storehouse for maturing wine and a small grocery store in an urban area. Well, "bodega" means all of those things in its native Spanish as well, and on top of that it's a place to store coffee beans. The etymology of the word goes all the way back to the Latin "apotheca," storehouse, which itself is descended from the Greek "apotheke" (αποθήκη), which also means storehouse. The more modern definitions concerning wine and groceries evolved from the places where wine or supplies were stored to be sold. And now you know.

Bueno, ésta es la bodega de Almacafé.
Well, this is Almacafé's warehouse.
Caption 06, Una Historia de Café - La Bodega

Ok. So what do we find in La Bodega? Each section of this bodega holds up to 20,000 sacks ("sacos") of coffee beans, each from a particular region ("departamento") of Colombia. We learn that the entire bodega holds approximately 200,000 sacks of coffee beans collected from the harvest ("la cosecha"). Impressed? That's quite a coffee buzz.

Soon, we'll post the videos that bring you into the laboratory where the Colombian coffee beans become cups of Joe.

If you recall, in the past we've discussed the use of estar harto when you are "fed up" with something of someone. We also talked about the use of aguantar to indicate that your tolerance is still intact. Well, we hope you're not yet sick of this subject! In this episode of Muñeca Brava Mili introduces us to yet two more ways to test our limits.

Mirá, flaco, la verdad que no te banco y me voy a ir, porque no te soporto.
Look, dude, the truth is I can't stand you and I'm going to leave, because I can't put up with you.
[Caption 41, Muñeca Brava > La Apuesta > 4]

¡Estoy harta de Juan! No lo banco más.
I´m sick of Juan! I can´t stand him anymore.

Should Milagros walk the streets dressed like THAT? In the latest installment of Muñeca Brava, our long-legged heroine gets all dolled up in a tight outfit to go dancing. Sister Cachetes isn't so sure about this.  She says:

Sí, bueno... Pero igual me voy a quedar rezando para que no te pase nada, ¡y ojo!
Yeah, well... But I'll nonetheless stay here praying that nothing happens to you, and careful!
[Caption 12, Muñeca Brava > La Apuesta > 4]

Mili replies:

Ah, ¿sí? Sí, ojo... ¿Ojo con qué? ¿Ojo con qué?
Oh, yeah? Yes, careful... Careful of what? Careful of what?
No me va a pasar nada. De verdad, no me va a pasar nada.
Nothing is going to happen to me. Really, nothing is going to happen to me.
[Captions 13-4, Muñeca Brava > La Apuesta > 4]

that means, "careful!" or "watch out!". In fact, you can silently point to your eye without saying a word and still be understood to be issuing a warning. Outside of Argentina, throughout Latin America and in Spain, the exclamation "¡Ojo!" is used and understood as well.

Note that Mili responds "¿Ojo con qué?" ("Careful of what?"). If you want to warn someone to be careful of something or someone in particular, use the preposition "con." Here are a few examples:

¡Ojo con los perros!
Careful of the dogs!

¡Ojo con los niños!
Watch out for the boys!

¡Ojo con los verbos irregulares en español!
Watch out for irregular verbs in Spanish!

¡Guarda con el escalón, te vas a tropezar!
Watch out for the step, you´re going to trip!

Cuidado con el perro
Beware of the dog

Arturo Vega moved from Mexico to the U.S. decades ago, so he's very well versed in all sorts of Americana. In fact, in our Spanish-language interview, he's occasionally searching for the right Spanish word, when the English one is at the tip of his tongue. For example, when Vega described a beloved belt buckle featuring an eagle that looked like it was made by "drunk Vikings," he asks his interviewer for help finding the right word.

Listen in:

Yo tenía un cinturón... que lo compré en una tienda del ejército, de esas de... cómo se dice, de "surplus", de... de desperdicios, de...
I had a belt... that I bought at an army store, one of those... how do you say, of "surplus," of, of leftovers, of...

-De segunda.
-Second-hand.

-De segunda, con un águila muy grande. Era de una banda militar.
-Second-hand, with a very big eagle. It was from a military band.
[Captions 33-7, Arturo Vega > Entrevista > 4]

In the U.S., we all know about Army-Navy surplus stores, where you can find fatigues, drab-olive jackets and eagle-blazoned belts. But selling military surplus to the public for discount prices is not a common practice in many other countries, hence the struggle for words here. Vega says "surplus" in English, which is usually translated as "excedente" in Spanish. But Vega follows up with "desperdicios" which translates as "waste," "scraps" or "leftovers" -- as in, "desperdicios sólidos" ("solid wastes").

Hearing his search for words, our interviewer jumps in with "De segunda" -- which is short for "de segunda mano" ("second hand"). Now, second-hand stores are known the world over. Although Vega must know that second-hand is a bit different than Army-Navy surplus, but he's simply trying to tell a story here. In other words, the belt was cheap, OK? And from that cheap belt came Vega's inspiration for the famous logo for the Ramones.

The title of Gardi's smoky song, "Leña Apagada," might be translated as "Extingushed Firewood." The image is meant to be kindling that was once on fire but has been put out.

Se vistió de hielo y leña apagada.
She dressed up as ice and extinguished firewood.
[Caption 16, Gardi > Leña apagada]

The verb "apagar" means "to put out / to extinguish" (as in a fire) or "to turn off" (as in a light, an electrical appliance or a car). The opposite of "apagar" is "encender" ("to light" and "to turn on"). Here are a couple of examples:

Enciende las velas
Light the candles.

¿Apagaste las luces? ¿Y la televisión?
Did you turn out the lights? And [did you turn off] the television?

¿Puedes encender una moto sin llaves?
Can you start up a motorcycle without keys?

If you're searching around for "an on/off switch," that would be "un interruptor de encendido" in Spanish.  Ready to shut down (apagar) your computer now?

As you head off to bed in Spain or Latin America, you may hear "Dulces sueños" ("Sweet dreams"). But note that the noun "sueño" isn't just for dreamers. From our online dictionary:

Sueño (masc.)
shut-eye, light sleep; sleep, unconscious state entered into by the body for the purpose of rest and rejuvenation (in humans and animals); dream, series of thoughts and visions which occur during sleep; delusion
                                                   --Babylon Spanish-English

Here are a few more examples of "sueño" for sleep and dreams:

¿Cuántas horas de sueño necesitas?
"How many hours of sleep do you need?"

" Yo tengo un sueño"
"I have a dream" (as Martin Luther King famously declared)"

Tengo sueño
"I'm sleepy"

Es el hombre de mis sueños
"He's the man of my dreams"

Naturally enough, "sueño(s)" make their way into many songs. Search Yabla's music directory and you'll find it in song titles like "Bienvenido al sueño" ("Welcome to the dream") by SiZu Yantra and "Por El Boulevar De Los Sueños Rotos" ("Along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams") by Joaquín Sabina.  In our latest batch of new videos, sueño pops up within two musical numbers.
 
In Gardi's Leña apagada, if you aren't too distracted by the Cuban singer's hirsute axila, you might grapple with lyrics like this line:

Dicen que su sueño respiraba moribundo
They say that her dream breathed as if dying
[Caption 32, Gardi > Leña apagada]

Ok. It's figurative. Chalk it up to poetic license.

Moving right along... Within the documentary of Alejandro Fernández's music, we hear the singer belt out:

Sueño contigo
I dream of you
[Caption 6, Alejandro Fernández > Viento a Favor > 2]

Aha. This "sueño" is a verb, not a noun. It's is the first-person (present tense) form of the verb "soñar" ("to dream"). "Soñar" is a stem-changing verb (o -> ue), as is "dormir" ("to sleep").  Here are a couple examples of dream and sleep as verbs:

¿Dormiste bien?
Did you sleep well?

Que sueñes con los angelitos
May you dream of little angels (an expression meaning, basically, "Sweet dreams")

While in English,  you "dream of" or "dream about" someone or something, in Spanish, the preposition to use to get the same point across is "con" (which, as you probably know, usually takes the meaning "with" -- but not in this situation).  Here are two more examples:

¿Sueñas conmigo?
Do you dream about me?

Juan sueña con Jeannie
Juan dreams of Jeannie.

"Soñar con" is just one of those verb-preposition pairings you must memorize to speak like a native. Sleep on that one, ok?

In the Argentine drama Provócame, we hear an ugly exchange between Mariano and his mamá. First, she calls her son an imbecile and then, a little later, Mariano spits:

¡Estoy harto de que te metas en mis cosas, mamá!  
I'm sick of you sticking your nose in my business, mom!
Estoy harto de vos.  
"I'm fed up with you."
[Captions 33-4, Provócame > Capítulo Seis > 1]

Yes, he's had it up to here, as we might say in English. Hearing these lines, we were reminded of the theme song for another drama in our library: Disputas. The song goes like this:

Me llamas para decirme que te marchas...  
"You call me to tell me that you're leaving..."
que ya no aguantas más...  
"that you can't take it anymore... "
que ya estás harta de verle cada día...
"that you're fed up by seeing him each day... "
de compartir su cama...  
"of sharing his bed..."
[Captions 13-8, Disputas > La Extraña Dama > 2]

Did you notice it's "harta" instead of "harto" in the song? The "you" is obviously female. You see, "harto(a)" is an adjective that on its own means "full." It agrees with the person who's, well, had it.

In this song, a similar sentiment is expressed with "ya no aguantas más" ("you can't take it anymore"). We wrote about the verb "aguantar" ("to endure, to bear, to stand, to put up with, to tolerate") before, in this lesson. As it happens, we also hear the word uttered in the newest installment of Provócame by young Julieta who claims to be running a very high fever (40º C = 104º F!). She says:

No parece porque me aguanto
"It doesn't look like it because I tolerate it"
[Caption 46, Provócame > Capítulo Seis >1]

You see, Julieta is enduring her illness in a way someone who's fed up with sickness might not. In a sense, you can tolerate (aguantarse) something until you are sick of it (estar harto).

Hola. ¿Qué pasa?

Now let's get started by looking at "pasar" -- a verb with many meanings. Here are some examples:

Hola. ¿Qué pasa? ¿Y qué te pasó?
"Hi. What's up? [used as a common greeting] And what happened to you?"

Pásame la sal.
"Pass me the salt."

Vilma pasó veinte minutos buscando las llaves.
"Vilma spent twenty minutes looking for the keys."

Él es muy cuidadoso al pasar la calle.
"He is very careful crossing the street."

As you can see from our examples, "pasar" can mean "to happen" or "to occur." It can also express the passage of an object (like salt), the passage of time (like 20 minutes) or the passage from one place to another (e.g., across the street).

In the first part of our documentary about singer Alejandro Fernández, we hear a reflexive version of the verb pasar:

Alejandro, te pasaste
Alejandro, you've outdone yourself
[Caption 3, Alejandro Fernández > Viento a Favor >1]

At first glance, a native English speaker might try to translate this as "Alejandro, you've passed yourself," which obviously isn't quite right. However, if we modify this attempt slightly, we get "you've surpassed yourself," which has the same meaning as what we went with,  "you've outdone yourself."

The sentiment here is positive; Alejandandro has done an excellent job on his new album. However, it's interesting to note that pasarse is probably most often used to indicate the negative sentiment of "going too far," either literally:

Nos hemos pasado, el teatro está más arriba.
"We've gone too far, the theater isn't this far down."

or figuratively:

Esta vez te has pasado, voy a llamar a tu mamá.
"This time you've gone too far, I'm going to call your mother."

In English, another way of expressing "to go too far" is "to cross the line." The same is true  in Spanish , where we find pasarse (de la raya). The de la raya portion of the phrase can be stated explicitly or omitted, in which case its meaning is implicitly understood. For example:

Me pasé (de la raya) al intentar besarla en los labios.
I went too far (crossed the line) when I tried to kiss her on the lips.

Las gasolineras se pasan (de la raya) con esos precios tan altos.
The gas stations are crossing the line with such high prices.

¡No te pases (de la raya)!
Don't cross the line! (Stay in check; control yourself.)

But all this negativity aside, in our video, "te pasaste" is clearly a compliment. Tone and context clue us in. It's similar in English when you say: "You've outdone yourself this time!," and, depending on your tone of voice and the context, such a statement can be taken as an insult or as praise.  We'll take that as a compliment.

After pianist Carli Muñoz tells us about his formative musical years, he wraps up with:

...el resto es historia...
...the rest is history...
[Caption 46, Carli Muñoz > Niñez]

Well, it's pretty easy for native English speakers: "El resto" means "the rest" or "the remainder."

Carli could just as well have used lo demás and the meaning would have been the same.

...lo demás es historia...
...the rest is history...

Lo demás also means "the rest" or "the remainder" and is reserved for referring to abstract concepts (such as "the story") or an indefinite/unspecific group of things.

Te amo y lo demás no importa. [abstract concept]
I love you and the rest is not important (nothing else matters).

Trae la valija negra y lo demás dejalo en el living. [things/stuff]
Bring the black suitcase and leave the rest (of it) in the living room.

When referring to people, the singular lo demás is not ever used, however the plural los demás is used (and used often):

Me siento tan feliz de ver la vida como los demás
I feel so happy to see life like all the rest (the way everyone else does)
[Caption 27, Joselo > Sobriedad]

Muchos espectadores se fueron, pero los demás aplaudieron.
Many of the spectators left, but the rest applauded.

Los demas also comes into play if we are talking about specific remaining items in a group of things.

Yo quiero tres galletas. Puedes dar los demás a tus amigos.
I want three cookies. You can give the rest to your friends.

El resto can also be used when talking about people, or rather when talking about people as a singular group:

Muchos espectadores se fueron, pero el resto (de los espectadores) aplaudió.
Many of the spectators left, but the rest applauded.

Note that what we wouldn't want to do in the above example is use los restos (in an attempt to pluralize el resto), because we would no longer be talking about the remaining spectators, but rather about their "mortal remains."

Olga pidió que llevaran los restos de su padre a Roma, donde él vivió sus últimos años.
Olga asked that her father's remains be returned to Rome, where he spent his last years.

If you'd like to bend your cabeza around this topic some more, there is a discussion in wordreference.com that you are sure to enjoy reading.

If you didn't know a word of Spanish, but you knew how to pronounce it, the following would instantly make sense to you:

¡Guau!
[Captions 22 and 37, Carli Muñoz > Niñez]

Listen to our interview with musician Carli Muñoz and you'll hear him wowed. Yes, he says: "¡Guau!" (pronounced as the English "Wow") twice in our four-minute segment. The spelling of "guau" is good to keep in mind when pronouncing other Spanish words that start with "Gua...." Two famous ones are geographic locations: the oft-sung Guantanamera (

click here for a popular performance) and the infamous Guantánamo. If you're like many North Americans (like, say,  Harold and Kumar), you may pronounce the latter "Gwan-TAN-a-mo," with the initial "G" audible (or you may just use the nickname "Gitmo"). But if you listen to native Spanish speakers, that initial "G" is so soft it all but disappears and the "W" sound is much clearer. (Here's one example we found to illustrate.)

Before we move on, here are two more lines to decipher based on your knowledge of Spanish pronunciation:

www.vuenosairez.com
¡Ja ja ja!

Stumped? The first is an events-listing website in Buenos Aires, which makes sense when you remember that "V" often sounds like "B" throughout the Spanish-speaking world and "Z" sounds like "S" in Latin America. You see, the unique URL

buenosaires.com must have already been taken when the edgier vuenosairez.com (aka vuenoz.com) set up shop.

The second line is laughing, pronounced "Ha ha ha!," but with a more guttural "H" than we typically use in English. Remember, in Spanish, "H" is always silent, while "J" sounds closest to the "ch" of Scotland, Wales or Germany (as in Achtung, baby.) But a good memory aid is that "J"s approximate the "H" of English, and so "je je" sounds like "heh heh" and "ji ji" sounds like "hee hee." For a few more, click here.

Tired? No way! In our latest installment of Muñeca Brava, we hear:

Ahora tengo los ojos como el dos de oro. No voy a poder pegar un ojo.
"Now I'm wide awake. I won't be able to sleep a wink."
[Caption 23, Muñeca Brava > La apuesta > 3]

Word for word, "el dos de oro" is "the two of gold [coins]." But we didn't subtitle our new video clip with this literal translation, because it makes little sense without an explanation. So here's our explanation: In a Spanish deck of cards ("una baraja española"), the four suits include "Oros," which are depicted with gold coins. The "2" card has two round coins, which rather resemble two wide open eyes. So the image sent us to the English expression, "wide awake."

If you're wide awake while reading this, you might note that Spanish uses a definite article before "eyes" that you wouldn't hear in English. In phrases like this one, describing a part of the body, the definite article is often used when a condition is not permanent (Mili's eyes are not always wide and round like two gold coins), but dropped when the condition is permanent.

Tienes los ojos cansados. [Not permanent.]
"You have tired eyes." (Your eyes look tired.)

Tiene ojos azules. [Permanent]
 "He has blue eyes."

Here's another thing you will notice when listening to native Spanish speakers: They usually do not use possessive pronouns to describe parts of the body. In cases where in English we find a possessive pronoun (e.g. my, your, his, her), a definite article is used in the Spanish equivalent.

Abre los ojos.
"Open your eyes."

Me corté el dedo.
"I cut my finger."

Le duele la pierna.
"His leg hurts."

Looking back at the dialog from Muñeca Brava (above), note that there's  another colloquial expression that deserves a closer look: pegar [un] ojo. In your dictionaries, you might find the verb pegar translated as "to stick," "to lean against" or "to hit." But no pegar ojo is best translated as "not sleeping a wink" -- i.e., not shutting those peepers at all.

Whether speaking or singing, members of Choc Quib Town are not afraid of linguistic gymnastics. The proudly Colombian crew plays with slang, made-up words, and foreign ones (as the English "Town" in their name attests). For example, listen in on these lyrics of Somos Pacíficos.

Allá rastrillan, hablan jerguidado, te preguntan si no has janguiado.
There they rub, speak slang, they ask you if you haven't hung out.
[Caption 16, Choc Quib Town > Somos Pacífico]

"Rastrillar" means "to rake," as in using a rake (un rastrillo) to clear the yard of fall leaves. But here the verb expresses just how close the bodies can get on the dancing floor. Rubbing, raking, bumping and grinding... you get the picture. Moving along, "jerguiado" comes from the noun "jerga," which is found in any basic dictionary as "slang" or "jargon." But Choc Quib Town playfully throws in the past participle of their made-up verb "jerguiar" ("to slang"). So, we could have translated "hablan jerguiado" as "they speak slanged." How slangy is that? Finally, "janguiado" is a classic example of fun with Spanglish. With "j" in Spanish pronounced like "h" in English, the verb "janguiar" is a "latinization" of the English expression "to hang out."

Slow... Señor Maquinitero.
"Slow... Mister Mix Master."
[Caption 6, Choc Quib Town > Somos Pacífico]

In our exclusive interview with Choc Quib Town, we meet the band, including its leader ("líder"), bass player ("bajista"), and a guy named Slow, who describes himself as Señor Maquinitero. Señor what?? After watching Slow busy at work on turntables, with equalizers and computer cords all around, it makes sense to conclude that he's calling himself something close to "Mister Mix Master," as we translated in the captions. You see, una máquina is "a machine." The diminutive maquinita is "a little machine" or "a video game." Finally, the suffix "-ero" can be added to a noun to create a new word that describes somebody who works with that noun. Here are a few examples:

zapato (shoe) + -ero = zapatero (cobbler or shoe salesman)
vaca (cow) + -ero = vaquero (cowboy)
ingeniería (engineering) + -ero = ingeniero (engineer)
rap (as in rap music) + -ero = rapero (rapper, rap artist)

Knowing your suffixes helps decode words that you might not find in your dictionaries -- like maquinitero or rapero. But note that Spanish has more than one suffix for professionals or tradespeople. For example, a standard Spanish dictionary lists someone who works with machines (e.g. to fabricate parts) as un maquinista ("a machinist"). Some more:

bajo (bass) + -ista = bajista (bass player)
batería (drums) + -ista = baterista (drummer)
taxi (taxi) + -ista = taxista (taxi driver)

A few nouns can have either -ero or -ista added to them to form new words, like the all important fútbol (soccer). Note that the definitions are slightly different:

Futbolero = soccer supporter
Futbolista = soccer player

But don't make sweeping generalizations about -ero vs -ista from the sporty example above. For example, a professional "bookseller" is a "librero" while a "book lover" or "book worm" is "amante de los libros," "un bibliófilo" or "ratón de biblioteca." Knowing the suffixes can help you along, but some memorization is required to get the details right (as in English).
 
Finally, we want to clarify: You might have noticed that the suffix -ista always ends in a, regardless of the gender of the person who's being described. With words like futbolista and taxista, you must rely on the articles to get the gender across. For example:

La futbolista = the female soccer player
Un taxista = a male taxi driver

In your dictionary, "mayor" may first pop up as the comparative and superlative form of "grande" meaning "bigger; biggest; older; oldest," but it carries other meanings, too. For example, "al por mayor" means "wholesale." Listen to our new featured song "Aparencias" ("Appearances"), where Héctor Montaner croons:

Si el amor me lo vendieran al mayor,

pagaría lo que fuera por comprarlo.

"If love were sold to me wholesale,

I would pay anything to buy it."

captions 5-6, Héctor Montaner > Aparencias

Note that Montaner takes a little bit of poetic license by skipping "por": In your dictionaries, "vender al por mayor" is the full, correct way to say "sell wholesale."



Elsewhere in new videos, Francisco in Salamanca describes his campus as:

...donde vamos los mayores

"...where we, the elders, attend"

caption 7, Francisco Pérez > Salamanca

At his school, mayores are defined as anyone 55 or older, but mayores can also simply mean "adults." You'll have to listen for the context to discern if mayores refers to ancianos, viejos y/o abuelos -- that is to say, the elderly -- or simply someone who's an adult, or of legal age.



If in doubt about the meaning of mayores (as a description or a comparison), heed this expression:

¡Más respeto con los mayores!

"Be more respectful to your elders (and betters)!"

From the lyrics of Belinda's "Bella Traición" ("Beautiful Betrayal"), you might detect bitterness:

Lo siento si agoté la ilusión

I'm sorry if I ran out of hope

[Caption 12, Belinda  > Bella Traición]

The verb agotar means "to exhaust; to use up; to run out of." It's helpful to remember that the noun gota means "drop" as in "a drop of water," (una gota de agua). The verb agotar stems from squeezing out every drop of something.



Now, you might ask why we didn't translate ilusión as its seemingly simply English cognate "illusion." After all, we might translate ilusión óptica as "optical illusion" and falsas ilusiones as "false illusions." But the Spanish ilusión has meanings you don't find in its English sound- alike. Check out these examples:



No te hagas ilusiones.

"Don't get your hopes up."



Su ilusión desde pequeña era ser actriz en Broadway.

"Her dream since she was little was to be an actress on Broadway."



Cuando pierdes la ilusión...

"When you lose heart..."



All of these examples employ "ilusión" as a synonym closer to "esperanza; sueño" or "hope; dream" in English. That's what we thought Belinda's lyrics were aiming to convey. Listen in to the song's refrain:

Porque sin ti no hay presente ni futuro, sálvame

de esta bella traición que me mató mi ilusión.

Because without you there's no present nor future; save me

from this beautiful betrayal that killed my hope.

[Captions 9-10, 19-20, 27-30, Belinda  > Bella Traició]

Now, before we move on we must note that ilusión has a third meaning: "excitement; thrill," as in these expressions:



¡Qué ilusión!

"How exciting!"



Me hace mucha ilusión

"I'm really looking forward to it; I'm thrilled."

Y la fruta es pura, natural. No manejamos ni un químico, nada.
“And the fruit is pure, natural. We don't use even a single chemical, nothing.”
[Caption 3, Documentary: PlayaDel Carmen: Naranjas]

Esta ahí, no manejamos ni un químico.
“It's there, we don't use a single chemical.”
[Caption 8, Documentary: PlayaDel Carmen: Naranjas]

Wait a second... Manejar is supposed to mean “to drive”! If you’re used to Latin American Spanish, you’re right and you’re in your right to be confused. Spaniards go for conducir whenever cars are involved. In fact their word for car is coche, when Latin-Americans use carro, auto or automóvil. (For more differences between Spanish from Spain and Spanish from Latin America, click aquí)

Manejar is a verb whose meaning is broader than “to drive.” Basically, it means “to use or have control over something.” That something could be a tool, a product or a car. Check out these examples:

En nuestra fábrica sólo manejamos productos de la más alta calidad.
"In our factory we only use products of the highest quality."

Jairo maneja muy bien el martillo.
"Jairo handles the hammer really well."

El gobernador manejó la situación con mucha discreción.
"The governor handled the situation with a lot of discretion."

When the object of the verb is a person, manejar morphs to "manipulate" or even "behave," like so:

Mi novia me maneja como ella quiera.
"My girlfriend manipulates me any way she wants."

Mi hijo se manejó muy bien en el desfile.
"My son behaved really well at the parade."

Manejar shares the same Italian roots (maneggiare) with the English verb "to manage," and can take this meaning as well, as shown in this example:

Humberto maneja las exportaciones de algodón.
"Humberto manages the cotton exportations."

Le debés quiniento' mango' a tu amiguito, quiniento' mango' a tu amig'... ¿Y querés saber otra cosa? A mí también me debés quinientos mangos...
"You owe your little buddy five hundred bucks, five hundred bucks to your li'l... And you want to know something else? You owe me five hundred bucks too..."
[Captions 7,8, Muñeca Brava > La Apuesta, Apuesta, Part 1]

In our latest episode of Muñeca Brava, Mili is clearly looking for revenge. So why is she mumbling about mangos and gansos? Milagros is always shouting clever and poignant argentinismos, that’s why we have to head far south to figure out what she is saying.

Milagros asks Ivo for quinientos mangos (500 mangos) and later on for quinientos pesos (500 pesos), pesos being Argentina's currency. So it's fairly clear that while everywhere else mango is a fruit, in the land of tango, it’s also a common slang for “money.”

That was easy to figure out, but then Mili says:

No te olvides de esto. Los quiero ahora. Poniendo estaba la gansa... ¡vamos!
Don’t forget about this. I want them now. Pay up... let's go!"
[Caption 19, Muñeca Brava > La Apuesta, Apuesta, Part 1]

Un ganso is a male goose (also known in English as a "gander"). As we learned previously, ser ganso means "being a fool." Gansa, however, is a female goose (known in English as a "goose"), and one of the meanings of poner is "to lay" (as in "laying an egg"), so poniendo estaba la gansa literally means "laying was the goose."

However, another meaning of poner is to "to contribute" or "shell out" or "pay up." Here are some examples:

¿Van a poner para el regalo de María?
"Are you going to chip in/contribute for María´s present?"

No te preocupes, si no podés poner $50, poné menos.
"Don´t worry, if you can´t put in $50, put in less."

Mi tío se puso con $1000 para el viaje de egresados.
"My uncle shelled out $1000 for my graduation trip."

Si te casás, tu papá va a tener que ponerse.
"If you get married, your father will have to shell out/cough up [the money]."

Poniendo estaba la gansa plays on these two possible meanings of poner ("to lay" and "to pay"). Some sources report that the complete phrase is poniendo estaba la gansa, que era gorda y estaba mansa ("laying eggs was the goose, who was fat and was tame") and that it comes from an old children's game. In actuality, we can't find an Argentine who's ever played the game (and some doubt that such a game ever existed). All agree that this expression is considered rather vulgar and low-class, which is no less than what we would expect from Milagros.

No voy a pagar porque a alguien se le ocurra decir 'poniendo estaba la gansa'.
"I'm not going to pay just because someone says 'poniendo estaba la gansa'."
-Sergio Dalla Lasta, quoted in LasIntesis.Com.Ar

We also have a new segment from the Argentine telenovela, Verano Eterno posted for your edification. Amid the rapid banter, we heard:

Ni loca
"No way"
[Caption 66, Verano Eterno > Fiesta Grande > 13]

"Ni loco" or "Ni loca" (for a female speaker) is basically a short-hand way to say "Not even if I were crazy," "No way" or "Not on your life."

Here are a few more short but colorful "ni" expressions that mean essentially the same thing:

Ni en broma
"Not even as a joke / No way"

Ni en pedo
"Not even drunk / No way"

Finally, there are some other phrases we thought of where "ni" + "que" means something like "como si" in Spanish. "Ni que" might be translated into English as "it's as if" or (with a negative slant) "it's not like." Here are two examples:

¿Por qué me gritas? ¡Ni que fuera sordo!
"Why do you yell at me? It's as if (you think) I'm deaf!"

Ni que fuera adivino, para saber lo que piensas.
"It's not like I'm a fortune teller who knows what you're thinking about."

Michael Stuart sings about a few things he either did not or cannot do. Listen in:

No te había ni conocido...I
I hadn't even met you..."
[Caption 8, Michael Stuart > Me Siento Vivo]

No me puedo ni imaginar...
"I can't even imagine..."
[Caption 20, Michael Stuart > Me Siento Vivo]

In both cases, we translated "ni" as "even," which may confuse some students who think first of "ni" as "nor," "or" or "neither" first and foremost. (For example: "No tengo tiempo ni dinero para viajar ," or, "No tengo ni tiempo ni dinero para viajar " translates as "I don't have the time nor the money to travel").

But the "ni" we hear in Michael Stuart's song is a "ni" as in "ni siquiera" that means "not even."

In the case of Michael Stuart's lyrics, we translate "ni" as "even" instead of "not even" because English doesn't do no double negative the way Spanish does. (Sorry! A lame attempt to illustrate our grammatical point.) If it did, we'd translate caption 20 from our song as "I can't not even imagine."

When there is only one (single) negative, the substitution of ni for no in a sentence not only changes the meaning from "not" to something more along the lines of "not even," but it tends to make the statement a bit more emphatic as well.

Desde que choqué, no manejo.
"Since I crashed, I do not drive."

Desde que choqué, ni manejo.
"Since I crashed, I don't [even] drive [at all]."

To a native speaker, the second statement has an implied meaning along the lines of "It's not like I drive more carefully now, I don't even drive at all!" or "I don't even think about driving!"

Todos los días ella pasa frente a mí y ni me saluda.
"Every day she passes in front of me and does not even say hello."

All this talk about commands brought us back to Shaila Dúrcal's wistful song, Vuélvete la luna. ("Become the moon"). Yup: here's another song title that's an order, if a somewhat abstract one. Some of you may know that Volver (the title of a recent Almodóvar film) means "to return." But did you know that "volverse" is one of many ways to say "to become"? For example:

Acaricia mi alma, vuélvete la luna
"Caress my soul, become the moon"
[Caption 14, Shaila Dúrcal > Vuélvete Luna]

Se volvió loco.
"He went [became] crazy."

A few other ways to say "to become" are hacerse, convertirse, and ponerse. Here are examples of how these "becoming" verbs work:

Hazte doctor.
"Become a doctor."

La librería se ha convertido en un McDonald's.
"The book store has become a McDonald's."

Se puso colorado.
"He turned red in the face."

A veces la vida se pone difícil.
"Sometimes life gets hard."

If you want to read more ways to say "become" in Spanish: Haz clic aquí (Click here).

Pues, no tan bien que se diga, pero más o menos me defiende un poco.
"Whell, not so good exactly but It more or less helps me a bit."
[Caption 8, Doña Coco > La Vida De Una Cocinera]

Doña Coco is not earning enough money que se diga, which literally translates to something like "it might be said." However, que se diga (commonly expressed as que digamos) is in fact a colloquial expression which has approximately the same meaning as precisamente ("precisely" or "exactly"), and is often used to mitigate negative statements, as we see here.

No me siento muy bien que se diga.
"I don't exactly feel good."

El pollo no está muy rico que digamos.
"The chicken isn't exactly very tasty."

Note that if we add "ni" we get the expression"ni que se diga," which is the Spanish equivalent to "Let's not even go there."

Los alumnos de cuarto grado son ruidosos. Los de quinto, ni que se diga!
"The fourth grade students are noisy. As for the fifth graders, let's not even go there!"

Desempeñar is an interesting verb brought to us courtesy of our Nicaraguan friends Leonido and Doña Coco. It basically means "to do" but goes a little further than that.

¿Qué trabajo desempeña aquí?
"What work do you carry out here?"
[Caption 1, Doña Coco > La Vida De Una Cocinera]

Desempeñar implies a time progression, a job or role that is being done or carried out. "Desempeñarse como secretaria would be "To hold a secretary position," and Miguel desempeña un papel importante en el proyecto is "Miguel plays an important part in the project."

Further, the word desempeñar points to obligations and responsibilities related to the role or job being accomplished. After all, desempeño is translated as "performance" and when you’re doing something con empeño (with diligence / with earnestness), it means that you’re putting great care and heart into it.

But beware! These words are used in another sense as well: Empeñar is "to pawn" which makes desempeñar the action of going to the pawnshop and getting back all your jewelry (to redeem it).

Sidenote: LoMásTv subscribers should go back and check out caption 8 of the song El Apostador by the band Control Machete, 'Casa voy a empeñar' --House I'm going to pawn.]

¡No llores! ("Don't cry!") is a useful command to know -- especially if you're the parent of a small child or a serial heartbreaker. It's also the title of a featured song by Cuban-born, U.S.-residing Gloria Estefan.

Did you know that negative, informal commands are formed differently than affirmative ones? You see, once you add a no, informal commands require the tú form of the present subjunctive to be grammatically correct. That means an -ar verb like llorar ("to cry") takes the second-person subjunctive ending -es to become no llores as a negative command.

To help you learn this grammar rule through repetition, just listen to the opening of this song:

No llores, no llores, no llores, no llores... [repite x 3]
"Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry... [repeat 3 x]"
[Captions 1-4, Gloria Estefan > No llores]

Got that? If the singer wanted tears to fall, she might have ordered, "llora, llora, llora, llora..." ("cry, cry, cry, cry...").

Now let's look at a line of the song with a little more vocal variety:

No te preocupes, deja el llanto y escucha mi canto que dice así...
"Don't worry; stop crying and listen to my song that goes like this... "
[Caption 28, Gloria Estefan > No llores]

decir as a command is "di" -- as heard in caption 15 of this same song -- and hacer is "haz" -- as heard in caption 6. You can review informal command forms here, here and/or here.

Note that the verb "dejar" can mean "to leave, to quit, to cease, to stop." So, "¡Déjame en paz!" means "Leave me alone!" (or, more literally, "Leave me in peace!"). "Dejar de" + an infinitive means "to stop [doing something]." Here's part of the song that illustrates:

Deja de llorar, deja de llorar, deja de llorar...
"Stop crying, stop crying, stop crying..."
[Caption 11, Gloria Estefan > No llores]

And again:

Deja de sufrir y suelta los temores
"Stop suffering and let go of the fears"
[Caption 12, Gloria Estefan > No llores]

Meanwhile, over in new music, we're featuring Shaila Dúrcal's wistful song, Vuélvete Luna. This opening line is setting up conditions to contrast what comes later in the song:

Aunque estas lágrimas me digan lo contrario...
"Although these tears may tell me otherwise..."
[Caption 1, Shaila Dúrcal > Vuélvete Luna]

Aunque, a combination of the words aun and que, is a common conjuction meaning "although" or "even though." (Do you remember we discussed that "aun" means "even"?) After a couple lines that begin this way, she switches to another contrast:

A pesar de todo lo que estoy pasando a diario...
"Despite everything I'm going through on a daily basis..."
[Caption 5, Shaila Dúrcal > Vuélvete Luna]

The phrase a pesar de means "despite" or "in spite of." Does that surprise you? Perhaps you're thrown because pesar can mean "to weigh." Well, note that pesar is not only a verb but also a noun that means "regret." But we can't get too mired in the word-by-word translation here because a pesar de is an idiomatic phrase that defies a literal, word-by-word translation. Kind of like "in spite of," come to think of it.

A pesar de ser tan trabajador, no logró el ascenso que quería.
"In spite of being such a hardworking man, he couldn't get the promotion he wanted."

No fue a la reunión a pesar de que le habían dicho que era muy importante.
"He didn´t attend the meeting despite being told it was very important."

A pesar de todo, todavía te quiero.
"In spite of all, I still love you."

In Mexico City, our Amigos D.F. return to tell us something about arquitectura (architecture) in el D.F. (in Mexico City, that is). Indicating a nearby building, we hear:

...abajo es una zona comercial, todo lo que vendría a ser la planta baja... y arriba, allá, son este... departamentos... residenciales.
"...below it's a commercial area, everything that would be the ground level... and above, there, are... apartments... residential."
[Captions 17-19, Amigos D.F. > Arquitectura]

Despite the rambling nature of this unscripted dialogue, it's easy enough to understand that there are commercial businesses on the ground floor of this building and residential apartments above. If the building has an elevator, pressing the p.b. (planta baja) button will take you to street level.

Push "1" in the same elevator and you'll end up on what's referred to as the "second floor" in New York or Miami.  You see, in Spain and in Latin America, "l primer piso is "the first floor *above* the ground level."

So, let's take this language lesson up a step. Say you want to visit your Mexican friend in his apartment up on "2." That's el segundo piso ("the second floor"). You see, you rarely hear la segunda planta or la primera planta outside of architectural drawings. In everyday speech, you'll usually hear pisos"instead of plantas describe floors 1 through, well, the sky's the limit.
A final note on arquitectura: Departamento is the word of choice for Latin American apartments. Meanwhile, over in Spain, you'll typically hear apartamento.

Dieciocho motivos pa' dejarte
Catorce consejos pa' olvidar
Quinientas razones para odiarte
Saco la cuenta, y a sumar...
[Captions 1-4, Ricardo Arjona > Quien]

Dejar(te), olvidar, odiar(te), sumar...
Songs sung in Spanish seem to contain a lot of verbs in the infinitive. Maybe that's because infinitives are so easy to rhyme -- since all end in either -ar, -er or -ir. But we digress. Among the new content on LoMásTV, there's a song by Guatemalan Ricardo Arjona. In it, we heard so many infinitives that we pored over the grammar rules to make sure we struck the right note in our translations. Below we'll highlight some of what we found along the way.

First, let's look at the translation of the first four lines of Arjona's song:

Dieciocho motivos pa' dejarte
Catorce consejos pa' olvidar
Quinientas razones para odiarte
Saco la cuenta, y a sumar...
Eighteen reasons to leave you
Fourteen tips to forget
Five hundred reasons to hate you
I do the math, and I add...
[Captions 1-4, Ricardo Arjona > Quien]

What do all the infinitives in bold have in common? Ok, they are all -ar verbs. But what else? They are all preceded by a preposition -- specifically, para ("for, in order to") in the first three lines, and then "a" ("to"), above. As a rule, only the infinitive may follow prepositions in Spanish.

We've discussed the use of prepositions para and por (both meaning "for") before infinitives in a past newsletter, if you'd like to review. (Loyal readers: Remember Chayenne's song "Por amor, por amar"?). With that concept already covered, let's move to the fourth line of our excerpt above.

Saco la cuenta, y a sumar...?" What does "a + infinitive mean? A ver ("Let's see") is the most famous example. You hear it all the time -- sometimes just to buy time in spoken Spanish. You also might hear ¡A bailar! ("Let's dance!") to get people going on the dance floor, or ¡A volar! ("Let's fly") at a graduation ceremony. It's one of the many ways to express a command in Spanish.

The a + infinitive construction in our new song by Arjona gave us a little pause, because translating a sumar as "let's add" sounded a little funny in English... But if you realize the singer is, in a sense, urging himself to crunch the numbers, the meaning falls into place.

Later in the song, we hear this line, twice:

Saco la cuenta, y a restar...
"I do the math, and I subtract"
[Caption 28, Ricardo Arjona > Quien]

As you've probably noted, for the English captions in these lines, we ended up choosing to keep the subject -- "I" -- throughout the sentence. But students who understand that a sumar and a restar are commands issued by the singer to urge himself on will have a better understanding of what the lyrics intend to communicate.

Can you find some more lyrics by Ricardo Arjona that use the preposition + infinitive construction? Here are a couple lines we were humming:

Dejaste minas en la casa
con objetivos de matar
"You left mines in the house
with the objective of killing"
[Caption 33, Ricardo Arjona > Quien]

[Want a refresher on the other uses of the infinitives?

About.com has some nice explanations of infinitives in Spanish here]

Let's take another look at the quote from our video:

Bueno... se puede variar con todo lo que... lo que se le antoje.
"Well... you can vary it with everything that... that you wish."
[Caption 22, Desayuno Puerto Escondido > Frijoles refritos]

In the same sentence, the second of the two verb constructions is se le antoje. Why se le...? Well, it turns out, antojarse [or, more accurately, antojársele] is a particular verb that only appears in the third person. Antojársele means "to fancy," "to strike one's fancy," "to feel like," "to want" or "to have in mind." This particular construction conveys the sense that the person with the wish isn't completely in control of the situation. Let's dig into a few examples to help clarify: From Collins Spanish Dictionary, 7th edition, we glean:

Se me antoja una cervecita
"I could go for a nice beer"

No se me antoja ir
"I don't feel like going"

To conjugate this particular verb, note that only the object changes; the verb itself is always in the impersonal, third person. So it's:

[Remember in past newsletters, we've looked at other verbs that take direct objects. Specifically, we've coverered "gustar"(e.g., "me gusta"; see newsletter #20), "encantar" (see newsletter #48), and "emocionar" (see newsletter #69). Here, we're looking at what happens when you slap a se in front. In fact, one can (se puede) make a lot of generalizations in Spanish using se, like this one.]

Note that there are other verbs in Spanish with the "-sele" construction that express unplanned, even out-of-control, occurrences. Some of the most common examples you might hear:

acabársele a alguien = to run out of
caérsele a alguien = to drop
ocurrírsele a alguien = to dawn on, to get the idea of
olvidársele a alguien = to forget
perdérsele a alguien = to lose
quedársele a alguien = to leave something behind
rompérse le a alguien = to break

For example, Se me perdió la llave might be translated into English as "I lost the key" but a more literal-minded, word-for-word translation is more like "The key was lost on me." It's a great way to reduce culpability, no?

As a final note: Related to the verb antojar is the oft-heard noun antojo, which means "whim." Pregnant women famously have antojos which we'd translated as "cravings" for, say, pickles and ice cream.

From a kitchen in Puerto Escondido (Oaxaca, México), we learn in Spanish about making refried beans -- two useful lessons wrapped up in one video. Note that we're not just talking about refried beans and rice: These onion-y beans can be served with bread, tortillas, cheese, scrambled eggs, sausage, nothing, everything... the sky's the limit. In sum, we hear, as a general rule:

Bueno... se puede variar con todo lo que... lo que se le antoje.
"Well... you can vary it with everything that... that you wish."
[Caption 22, Desayuno Puerto Escondido > Frijoles refritos]

Those of you following the subtitles word for word may wonder why we chose to translate se puede as "you can." Here, "you" is really an impersonal, general subject; it could also be translated as "one can." You see, in Spanish, the construction se + a verb in the third person (singular or plural) is commonly used to deemphasize the subject. Here are a few examples:

Se habla español aquí
"Spanish is spoken here"

Se come bien en esta cuidad
" People eat well in this city"

¿Cómo se dice "Formula One" en español?
"How do you say "Formula One" in Spanish?"

As you can see in the above examples, the "se + verb" construction can be translated into English in a few ways: (1) With a passive construction; (2) using "people" or "one" as the unspecified subject; or (3) using "you" as the subject, but in an impersonal, generalized sense. The third choice -- "you" -- seemed like the most appropriate translation for our refried bean recipe.

Native English speakers, if they directly mirror the English passive voice, can come up with unnatural Spanish phrases. Instead they need to accustom themselves to the Pasiva con "se."

"Cars are repaired in two days."
Los autos son reparados en dos días. [Not natural in Spanish]
Se reparan autos en dos días. [Natural in Spanish]

"This bill is being discussed in the Congress."
Este proyecto de ley está siendo tratado en el Congreso. [Not natural]
Este proyecto de ley se está tratando en el congreso. [Natural]

When native English speakers hear "tres tiempos" for the first time, they might think it means "three times." But Spanish uses a different word to describe "time," as in, "an occurrence." That word is "vez."

It just so happens that Las Orishas' music video featured "vez" three times ("tres veces"). Let's listen:

Una vez yo te demuestro que no es facilito
Como el puré que preparaba tu vecino Lino.
"Once I show you it's not so easy
Like the mashed potatoes your neighbor Lino used to make."
[Captions 28-9, Las Orishas > ¿Qué Pasa?]

Ok. Ok. So our translation doesn't rhyme like the rap it's aiming to explain... But you get the idea. Here's one more, without rhyme:

Una vez más tu vecino aquí me va a escuchar.
"One more time your neighbor will listen to me here"
[Caption 32, Las Orishas > ¿Qué Pasa?]

And then:

Pido una vez más su comprensión y aceptación
"I ask once more for your understanding and acceptance"
[Caption 48, Las Orishas > Qué pasa]

It's time to learn a little bit more about tiempo -- which is one way to express time in Spanish.

So, tiempo means "time" -- as in "a system used to place one event in relation to another (such as past vs. present, yesterday vs. today)" -- it also means, less abstractly, "period" -- as in "a span of time" (which could be minutes, hours, days, weeks...). For example, soccer fans getting online updates should note that a match consists of primer tiempo, entretiempo and segundo tiempo, often abbreviated as 1T, ET and 2T, respectively. Meanwhile, in English, we might speak of first period (or, more common in soccer, first half), half time and then the second half.

Ok. Now let's spend a little time with the latest videos on LoMásTV. In one, we hear restaurant manager José Luis Calixto Escobar of Mexico speak of tiempos in the following sentence:

La comida sale económicamente porque contiene lo que son tres tiempos.
"The meal is cheap because it has what are three courses."
[Caption 26, Fonda mi lupita > Mesero > 1]

Outside of México, it may be more common to hear talk of una comida con tres platos (literally: "a meal with three plates") to describe "a three-course meal." Una comida en [o, de] tres tiempos describes the same idea. To illustrate, José goes on to describe a soup course, then a rice or pasta and then a meat plate. Yum. This menú -- another word used to describe a meal of many parts -- even comes with water. Completamente (That's José's oft-repeated verbal tic. Think: "totally" in English.)

Incidentally, flip comida de tres tiempos around, and you have los tres tiempos de comida -- that is, breakfast, lunch and dinner, or the three meals/mealtimes of the day. Note that comida not only means "food," but that it also can describe the time spent eating food -- i.e., a meal.

Just a few moments later in the Oreiro interview, Natalia Oreiro's father corrects himself with the phrase mejor dicho, which can be translated as "better said" or "rather." Note that dicho ("said") is the past participle of the irregular verb decir ("to say"). We also hear dicho in our interview with the co-founder of Tu Rock es Votar Armando David. Armando says dicho y hecho ("said and done").

Looking around at other dicho sayings, we found the catchy:

Del dicho al hecho hay gran trecho.
"From the saying to the deed, there's a big distance."
(or "Easier said than done.")

By the way, another definition for dicho actually is "saying," as we noted in passing in this space, just a few weeks ago

Moving right along, with Natalia's proud papa, we come across this line:

...lo que más me emociona ...
"...what moves me the most ... "
[Caption 51, Natalia Oreiro > 8]

You see, emocionarse is a reflexive verb meaning "to be moved [by]." Like the verbs gustar or encantar (which we wrote about in this space before), emocionar agrees with the object of the sentence -- i.e., whatever it is that is moving -- instead of the speaker.

To see emocionarse at work, we are featuring a touching interview with the Mexican musical group Belanova this week. Here are the examples we gleaned from their interview:

...es porque les emociona nuestro proyecto.
"...it's because they are moved by our project. (Or: ...it's because our project moves them.) "
[Caption 24, Belanova > Entrevista > 3]

...que nos emociona mucho hacerlo...
"...that really moves us when doing it..."
[Caption 31, Belanova > Entrevista > 3]

...que a toda la gente que ve a Belanova se emociona.
"...which moves all the people who see Belanova"
[Caption 33, Belanova > Entrevista > 3]

In the examples above, note that emociona (the third personal singular, present form of emocionar) agrees with the project, action or sight that is considered moving. Meanwhile, the object pronouns les (for "them"), nos (for "us") and se (for "everyone" -- i.e., toda la gente) let us know who is being moved by the subject in each of the examples above.

A Ana y María les emocionan las películas de amor antiguas.
"Ana and Maria are moved by old love films."

Estas historias nos emocionan mucho.
"These stories really move us."

Our four new video clips deliver more than fifteen minutes of spoken Spanish -- subtitled and translated -- to your computer. To learn all you can from the rapid-fire banter, check out Yabla's "slow play" feature. (To activate, simply click SLOW on the Yabla Player). By taking the pace down a notch, you might notice some nuances that could otherwise elude you.

One subtlety we noted in the eighth installment of our chat with actress Natalia Oreiro was that she and her father use the phrase "de repente" in different ways. First, let's listen to Natalia describe seeing herself on TV in her first starring role:

Y de repente aparezco yo...
"And suddenly I appear..."
[Caption 43, Natalia Oreiro > 8]

The word "repente" on its own means "fit" or "burst." But in everyday spoken Spanish, it's often heard in the idiom "de repente" which primarily means "all of a sudden" or "suddenly." That's how Natalia uses it here, when she was surprised to see her own image on the TV screen.

But just a few lines later, we hear from Natalia's dad. He's obviously not a professional actor and he, well, hesitates on camera more than his daughter, explaining:

...pierdo la continuidad de... de... de... de repente de escucharla
"...I lose the habit of... of... of... maybe of listening to her"
[Caption 52, Natalia Oreiro > 8]

In the Oreiro family's native Uruguay (as well as in Venezuela), de repente can also mean "maybe," according to the Diccionario de la lengua española from the Real Academia Española. Another translation of de repente (although it doesn't fit here) is "spontaneously," i.e., without premeditation. Who would have guessed?

Cuando lo vi con esa mujer me dio un repente de furia.
"When I saw him with that woman, I went into a fit of rage."

On the Venezuelan shore, Francisco expresses his deep appreciation for the wild, natural beauty of his surroundings. In front of the camera, Francisco hesitates a few times, but it's not from lack of conviction. He's simply buying time to find the right word. For example:

Los arrecifes... la... la... el fondo marino en... en sí que es demasiado increíble.
"The reefs... the... the... the ocean floor in... in itself is too incredible."
[Caption 4, Adícora > Francisco > 4]

One might take pause upon hearing en sí because those two words separately can mean "in" and "yes." But sí with an accent over the i is not just an affirmation; it's also a reflexive personal pronoun (short for sí mismo / sí misma) meaning himself, herself, itself, oneself, yourself (as in the formal usted), yourselves (ustedes) or themselves -- depending on the context.

Lo leyó para sí misma.
"She read it to herself." [not out loud]

Cada uno debe hacerlo por sí mismo.
"Each person has to do it himself or herself."

Solía pensar por sí mismo; no era influenciado por los tan llamados expertos.
"He used to think for himself; he wasn't influenced by the so-called experts."

¡Venga y compruébelo por sí mismo!
"Come and check it out for yourself!"

Let's look back at our original example and home in on the idiom en sí, which means the same thing as en sí mismo (English translations: "in itself" or "in and of itself" or simply "itself").

El trabajo en sí no era interesante, pero le daba la posibilidad de viajar.
"The job itself wasn't interesting, but it gave him the opportunity to travel."

Amor es bueno en sí naturalmente,
"Love in itself is naturally good,"
[from Juan Boscán's Sonnet, sixteenth century poetry]

You will also find it interesting to note that volver en sí, which we might be tempted to translate as "to come back to one's self," is an expression that means "to regain consciousness / to come to." It can also mean "to come around," as in "to realize the truth."

Si no vuelve en sí pronto, debemos llevarlo a un hospital.
"If he doesn't come to soon, we must take him to a hospital."

Por suerte volvió en sí y se dió cuenta que era una locura.
"Luckily he came around and realized it was a crazy idea."

This lesson has valor en sí misma, if you ask us!

You can further explore reflexive pronouns with our friends over at Spanish Online.

If you want to engage in small talk in Spanish, you should learn to chat about the weather el clima" or "el tiempo"). In our travel video from Mexico City (a.k.a. D.F., or Distrito Federal), some local friends share many helpful nuggets for prattling on about the temperature, rain, global warming -- three common topics of conversation pretty much anywhere in the world. For example, regarding the temperature:

yo diría, templado... un clima ni muy caliente ni muy frío
"I'd say mild... a climate neither very hot nor very cold"
[Captions 4-5, Amigos D.F.> El clima]

And just a few captions later, on what falls from the skies:

Un poco de lluvia, este... chispeadas... a veces, en ocasiones granizo...
"Some rain, um... drizzle... at times, occasionally hail"

Or, if you want to discuss the melting glaciers:

con el relajo éste del calentamiento global
"with this global warming mess"
[Captions 7- 8, Amigos D.F.> El clima]

Later in the video clip, we're let in on a little rhyme about the weather. In English you may know "April's showers bring May's flowers." Well, in Mexico, we hear:

De hecho hay un dicho que dice "enero loco, febrero otro poco"
In fact, there's a saying that goes "January's crazy; February, a bit too"
[Caption 22, Amigos D.F.> El clima]

Sniffing around for some more catchy phrases, we found this website of Refranes sobre los meses del año. (Incidentally, they cite the same phrase but pushed ahead by a month, febrero loco, marzo otro poco.)

Going to the private party where The Ramones were performing for the first time ever ended up changing the life of painter/ artist Arturo Vega. Our featured video interview with Vega captures the story.

Entonces, yo fui porque, pues, era una fiesta, ¿verdad? Y Dee Dee me caía bien.
"So, I went because, well, it was a party, right? And I liked Dee Dee."
[Caption 40, Entrevista > Arturo Vega > 3]

So, students following the subtitles of this interview may choose to click the Spanish words that they don't know for Yabla's handy dictionary definitions. It happens that if they clicked caía, the dictionary would reveal that it's a third-person past tense of the verb caer. And what does caer mean?:

All these definitions are true, but what about "liking someone" -- as the verb is used here? Turns out that in Spanish, to say you like someone, you basically say that someone, well, falls well for (or, to) you. That is to say, Me cae bien means "I like him/ her" or "He/she made a good impression on me."

Conversely, Me cae mal means "I don't like him/her."

You may be wondering if he might have used the verb gustar, which also can be used to indicate liking something or someone. However, when using gustar to refer to people, there can be romantic/sexual connotations. Using caer bien eliminates any potential misunderstanding, as it refers to a purely platonic attraction.

In your travels through the Spanish speaking world you will undoubtedly come across other interesting uses of caer.

No puedes caer así sin avisar. (slang)
"You can't drop by like that without calling."

Siempre es igual, le cuentas un chiste y cae media hora más tarde.
"It's always the same, tell him a joke and he gets it a half hour later."

Me puedes
"You can get to me / I can't resist you"
[song title, La Gusana Ciega > Me Puedes]

The song title for La Gusana Ciega's new video may at first sound like an incomplete phrase. After all, it's common to see the verb poder (to be able to) conjugated with a direct object -- as in, me puedes -- followed by another verb in the infinitive, such as Me puedes ayudar, (You can help me) -- or, with question marks, ¿Me puedes ayudar? (Can you help me?).

So, when encountering me puedes on its own, one may struggle to find sense in "you can me." (You can what me?) But the verb poder can also mean "to be stronger than," or "to have power over," which will give us "You are stronger than me / You have power over me" or, seen from another angle, "I can't resist you."

To investigate further, we went straight to the source, Daniel Gutierrez, lyricist/vocalist/guitarist of La Gusana Ciega. We asked him what he had in mind when he titled the song "Me puedes." Daniel, who speaks English quite well, replied and told us how the title ties into the song's refrain of me vas a ver llorar (you're going to see me cry):

It would be sort of a YOU GET TO ME referring to "you can make me cry" if you want.

¡Gracias, Daniel! If only we could always contact all our video stars directly. Alas, no podemos.

La curiosidad me pudo y fui a ver el combate de lucha.
"Curiosity got to me [got the best of me] and I went to see the wrestling match."

Está bien, me puedes... vamos a ir al zoológico el domingo.
"Alright, I can't say no [to you]... we'll go to the zoo on Sunday."

Estoy a régimen, pero la torta de chocolate me puede.
"I'm on a diet, but I can't resist chocolate cake."

¡Ese chico me puede!
"I'm crazy for that boy! [can't resist him]"

Esta niña me puede... no pude decirle que no.
"I can't resist this girl [her charms]... I couldn't say no to her."

Cuando llegué estaba enojada, pero esa sonrisa me puede...
"When I arrived I was angry, but I can't resist that smile..."

NOTE: You might be wondering if it's therefore possible to say te puedo for "you can't resist me." But our translators inform us that native speakers don't do this, and probably wouldn't understand it if you attempted to convey this sentiment like that.

If you want to say, "Let's get to the point" in Spanish, you say, "Vamos al grano." Remember the word "grano" mentioned earlier in this newsletter? It's a noun that means "grain" (e.g., a grain of cereal or sand), "bean" (as in a coffee bean) or "pimple" (a spot on the skin -- as we used it above).

Based on the individual words, you might think "vamos al grano" meant "let's go to the grain" if you didn't know the expression. But in standard Spanish from both Spain and Latin America, "vamos al grano" is commonly understood to mean "let's get to the substance of something" (pushing aside all superfluous niceties or meaningless details).

The lyrics to Risa from Babasónicos include the phrase (with the verb "ir" in its subjunctive form):

Algo en tus labios color carmín sugiere que vayamos al grano
"Something in your carmine lips suggests we get to the point"
[Captions 14-5, Babasónicos > Risa]

Another way we might say that in English is "let's cut to the chase" or "let's not beat around the bush."

We stumbled upon some more useful phrases containing "grano" (or its diminutive "granito"):

apartar el grano de la paja
"to separate the wheat from the chaff"

hacer una montaña de un grano de arena
"to make a mountain out of a molehill" (Hint: "arena" means "sand")

poner su granito de arena
"to do one's bit / add one's two cents"

And that's our granito de arena for now. Enjoy the videos.

One of the very first things a student of Spanish or any language learns is how to count. So, what comes after veinte (twenty)? Veintiuno! (Twenty-one!) Simple, right? So listen to this young man from Mexico introduce himself in front of the video camera:

Hola, ¿cómo están? Mi nombre es David de Valle. Tengo veintiún años y soy estudiante de negocios internacionales.
"Hi, how are you? My name is David de Valle. I'm twenty-one years old and I'm a student of international business."
[Captions 1-2, Amigos D.F. > Consejos para la calle]

So where did the 'o' at the end of veintiuno go? As it turns out, "veintiuno" is on a short list of Spanish words that lose their last, unstressed syllable when they come before certain nouns. [To get technical, we're talking about "apocope," (apócope in Spanish) defined as "the loss of one or more sounds or letters at the end of a word" (Merriam-Webster).]

Remember, when nothing follows the number 21, every syllable is pronounced:

¿Cuántos años tiene David?
Veintiuno.
"How old is David?
Twenty-one."

But when 21 is followed by a masculine noun or feminine noun that begins with a stressed "a" or a stressed "ha" sound -- it loses that final "o" and an accent mark is added to keep the stress on the "ú." For example:

David tiene veintiún años.
"David is twenty-one years old."

El pobrecito tiene veintiún granos.
"The poor kid has twenty-one pimples."

La caja tiene veintiún hachas.
"The box has twenty-one axes."

When 21 is followed by a feminine noun that does not begin with a stressed "a" or "ha" sound, the final "o" in veintiuno becomes an "a," giving us veintiuna, for example veintiuna chicas (twenty-one girls) or veintiuna sillas (twenty-one chairs).

El libro tiene veintiuna páginas.
"The book has twenty-one pages."

[Note: It is not at all uncommon to hear this rule as it pertains to feminine nouns being "broken" by native Spanish speakers. For example, the Spanish pop group "21 Japonesas" (21 Japanese Girls) is often called "Veintiún Japonesas" by broadcasters, much to the dismay of language watchdogs.]

The number "one" ("uno") and any other number that ends with "one" follows the same pattern, so it's "ochenta y uno without a noun following the number, but ochenta y un años or ochenta y una reglas ("eighty-one rules"). [Note that no accent mark is needed for the u in un since there could be no confusion regarding which syllable to stress in the one syllable word.]

Other common words that drop endings before certain nouns include "ciento -> cien" ("100"), "bueno -> buen" ("good"), and "santo -> san" ("saint"). There are more extensive lists of apocopes in Spanish here and here.

So, how does La Secta's refrain go? (¿Cómo dice el estribillo de La Secta?) Here it is:

Llora mi corazón
Rogando tu perdón
"My heart cries
Begging for your forgiveness"
[Captions 7-8, etc., La Secta > Llora mi corazón]

In this lyric's translation, we noted that perdón means -- and sounds like -- "pardon" in English. But it also means "forgiveness." Because "begging your pardon" sounds too stilted and too close to the question "Beg your pardon?," we chose "forgiveness" here.

(Incidently, "Beg your pardon?" -- as in, "What did you just say?" -- is usually ¿Cómo? in Spanish.)

Coming soon on LoMásTV, we'll provide consejos para la calle ("advice for the street") to teach you when to use perdón (pardon), permiso and disculpe (excuse me). Tune in then to learn the best way to clear a path and beg forgiveness when you knock someone down.

In our latest live concert footage of Belanova, lead singer Denisse Guererro turns to the audience and asks:

¿Cómo dice?
[Caption 17, Belanova > Tus ojos]

The crowd responds by singing along to the well known song. North of the border, concertgoers might hear the words "How does it go?" to provoke a similar sing-along.

But wait. Most of you know the verb decir most often means "to say" or "to tell." It's ir that typically means "to go." A literal-minded translation of ¿Cómo dice? might be something more like "What does [it / the song / the tune] say?"

When we asked around, we gathered some more examples of English phrases in which "go" is best expressed in Spanish with decir. Here they are:

"As the song goes"
Como dice la canción

"As the saying goes"
Como dice el refrán

"So the story goes"
Se dice

"So the argument goes (reputedly)"
Según se dice

Hearing "decir" used in this context, it becomes much easier to understand another new music video. In "Llora mi corazón," La Secta Allstar leads into their own refrain with:

Y dice...
"And it [i.e., the song's refrain] goes [like this:]..."
[Caption 6, La Secta > Llora]

So, how does La Secta's refrain go?

Did you wonder why it's "lo mismo" and not "el mismo" or "la misma" in our examples above? The answer is that "lo" is the neuter article in Spanish and it is used to stand in for an abstract idea, concept, category or quality--in other words, something that's not a concrete object or person. One way to translate it is as "thing" -- but sometimes there's no easy translation.

Here are some more phrases that take "lo" before an adjective:

lo bueno = "the good part, what's good"
lo fácil = "the easy part, what's easy"
lo important es que... = "the important thing is that..."
lo mío = "(that which is) mine"
lo nuestro = "(that which is) ours"
lo más = "the most" -- as in LoMásTv, of course!

Let's look at the refrain once more (with "lo" as our focus):

No es lo mismo una sospecha que saberlo de verdad.
No es saberlo de verdad lo mismo que una sospecha.
"A suspicion isn't the same [thing] as knowing it for sure.
Knowing it for sure isn't the same [thing] as a suspicion."
[Captions 7-8, 9-10, etc., Circo > La Sospecha]

Now, you've noted that "lo" is standing in for something unknown in this song -- something that's neither masculine nor feminine per se. When "lo" appears before an adjective or adverb, it's easy to recognize as neuter. But, to complicate matters, "lo" can also be a masculine direct object -- as in, "Lo vi" ("I saw him"). The only way to straighten out whether "lo" is a masculine or neuter object in a sentence is via the context.

In our Circo song lyrics, the second "lo" (-- "saberlo") also stands in for something undefined. As the direct object of a verb, lo works in a similar way in these common phrases:

Lo siento = "Sorry" (or, literally, "I feel it")
No lo sabía = "I didn't know [it]"
No quiero saberlo = "I don't want to know [it]"

For more on the neuter, see

About.com > Spanish language > The neuter gender in Spanish

When we premiered the spacy music video Bienvenido by Sizu Yantra several months ago, we received this letter:

If someone had asked me to translate "if you find the world sickly" I might have come up with "si el mundo tú encuentras enfermizo"... could someone explain why the "lo" is in there? --DonJorge, San Mateo, CA

si al mundo lo encuentras enfermizo...
"if you find the world sickly..."
[Caption 2, Sizu Yantra > Bienvenido]

When lo is not busy working as a neuter article (e.g. lo importante, "the important thing/what's important"), or as an "undefined" neuter direct object (e.g. No puedo creerlo, "I can't believe it"), lo can also be found serving duty as the masculine singular direct object pronoun, just as la does as the feminine singular direct object pronoun.

¿Dónde encontraste el perro?
Lo encontré en la calle.
"Where did you find the dog?
I found it on the street."

¿Desde cuándo has querido a María?
Siempre la he querido.
Since when have you loved Maria?
I have always loved her.

¿Quien rompió la mesa?
Juan la rompío.
"Who broke the table?
Juan broke it."

As you can see, when we mention the direct object by name (e.g., el perro), it comes after the verb. When we replace it, the direct object pronoun (such as lo, or la) comes before the verb.

However, it is permissible in Spanish to mention your direct object by name AND put it before the verb, but if you do this you must include both the object and its pronoun. When we do this we provide more emphasis to the direct object, as Sizu Yantra emphasizes "el mundo" in the example above.

Al perro lo encontré en la calle.
"I found the dog in the street."

La mesa la rompió Juan.
"Juan broke the table."

Now's a good time to go back and take another listen to Bienvenido by Sizu Yantra! (it's in the "Music Videos" section)

Puerto Rican band Circo remind us that a suspicion is, by definition, not the same as a confirmed fact. Here's the refrain:

No es lo mismo una sospecha que saberlo de verdad.
No es saberlo de verdad lo mismo que una sospecha.
"A suspicion isn't the same as knowing it for sure.
Knowing it for sure isn't the same as a suspicion."
[Captions 7-8, 9-10, etc., Circo > La Sospecha]

The repeated refrain is reminiscent of a series of jokes in Spanish that start "No es lo mismo [decir]..." ("It's not the same [to say]... "). For example:

No es lo mismo decir: "me río en el baño" que "me baño en el río."

And the English translation?

It's not the same to say: "I laugh in the bathroom" as "I bathe in the river."

And that's funny? Well, the little joke is hinged on the fact that the verbs "reirse" ("to laugh") and "bañarse" ("to bathe") have conjugations that sound just like the nouns "el río" ("the river") and "el baño" ("the bathroom"). And that's why flipping the words around is un chiste (a joke) only in Spanish. Just try translating a groan-worthy English "knock-knock" joke into another language...

You can find dozens more "no-es-lo-mismo" chistes online with a simple search.