Pena frequently refers to “sorrow” or “grief,” as you may have discovered when listening to the melancholic lyrics of Frente a Frente by Enrique Bunbury:

Y así ahogar las penas
And like that drown our sorrows
Caption 15, Bunbury - Frente a frente

Pena also can refer to “shame” or “pity,” as used by Spanish soccer star Iker Casillas when discussing catastrophes, such as the earthquake in Haiti.

La... la pena es que siempre suceden en... en los sitios más desfavorecidos.
The... the shame is that they always go on in... in the most disadvantaged places.
Caption 25, Iker Casillas - apoya el trabajo de Plan

It’s no surprise, then, that the common expression ¡Qué pena! is used to express “What a shame!” or “What a pity!”

Pena is often preceded by a form of the verb dar (to give), giving us the expression “dar pena.” It can be used to express sorrow or sadness.

Me da pena verlos sufrir así.
It makes me sad to see them suffer like that.

In much of Latin America, dar pena is also commonly used to express a sense of feeling ashamed or embarrassed. We hear this in the worldwide hit Fuego from Colombia’s Bomba Estéreo.

Vamos hasta abajo, a mí no me da pena
Let's get down, I’m not ashamed
Caption 25, Bomba Estéreo - Fuego

Along the same lines, many Latin Americans also use dar pena to express feeling shy. When we visit Fonda Mi Lupita for lunch in Mexico City, the manager, José, tells us why Carmen, the cook, is doing her best to hide from the camera:

Ella se llama Carmen, que le da un poquito de pena.
That’s Carmen, who is a little shy. [She feels a little embarrassed.]
Caption 21, Fonda Mi Lupita - Encargado - Part 1

Dar, in the case of dar pena, falls into the category of “verbs like gustar.” The construction is not parallel with the way we usually express the same sentiment in English; a mí no me da pena literally translates to “[it] does not give me shame.” This sounds rather awkward, of course, in English, where “I’m not embarrassed” is the common way to express the same sentiment. (In line with typical “verbs like gustar” construction, our Spanish natives agree that José would have been more grammatically correct if he had said a quien le da un poquito de pena.)

Pena can also commonly refer to “punishment,” so it’s not unusual to see it used in phrases like con la pena de muerte (under the punishment of death) or la pena máxima permitida por la ley (the maximum punishment permitted by law).

Vale la pena (“it’s worth it”) to keep an eye out for these and other interesting uses of the word pena!

Related lessons from our archives:

Merecer la pena
Le in “verbs like gustar"; Le in leísmo
Gustar: To like, to please, to taste

The Spanish verb caer means "to fall." Listen to what our artist friend Francisco tells us about a big coastal flood that took place in Venezuela a few years back:

Mucha madera cayó en el mar.

A lot of wood  fell into the sea.

Caption 8, Playa Adícora - Francisco - Part 3

When describing the tumble-down of a person, caer is very commonly used in the reflexive, caerse. Notice it when  Venezuelan pop band Sondulo sings this line:

Si me caigo, me vuelvo a parar.

If I fall, I stand up again.

Caption 8, Sondulo - Que te vaya mal

On the other hand, it is also possible to use caer when someone drops something.

¿Y en un momento se te cayó una birome al piso? -Sí.

And at a certain moment you dropped a pen on the floor? -Yes.

Caption 67, Cuatro Amigas - Piloto - Part 2

This is the same sort of “impersonal” (passive voice) construction that we saw in our lesson on olvidar. Literally, what the Spanish phrase is saying is that the pen fell and that this happened to “you.” (Spanish speakers will understand that you unintentionally dropped it.)

The reflexive verb caerse is conjugated in relation to the object dropped, the pen, not to the person who (unintentionally) dropped it. It is only thanks to the indirect object pronoun te that we know that it was “you” (tú) who dropped it. As a consequence, if we remove the pronoun “te” the meaning of the sentence will change:

¿Y en un momento se cayó una birome al piso? -Sí.

And at a certain moment a pen fell on the floor? -Yes.

We find the same construction when Mexican first lady Margarita Zavala talks about her husband, Felipe:

Felipe es un... muy buen papá, pues se le cae la baba por sus hijos, les toma fotos...

Felipe is a…. very good father, he really loves his kids, he takes pictures…

Caption 15, Felipe Calderón - Publicidad - Part 2

Caérsele (a uno) la baba is an expression used to express deep fondness for someone or something. Literally, la baba means “the drool.” So the idea is that you like something so much it makes you drool (or “the drool falls”/”you drool”). Of course it’s an expression and native speakers do not think about it in literal terms.

Note that this “impersonal” construction is not used if someone drops something intentionally, in that case we look to the verb tirar:

Cuando vio la pistola, tiró el cuchillo.

When he saw the gun, he dropped the knife.

Keep your eye out for these and other interesting uses of caer when you tune into LoMásTv for your daily dose of authentic Spanish.

We really hope that you never find yourself hanging upside down in a hunter's trap in the middle of the jungle. However, since a problem might aways be a la vuelta de la esquina (around the corner), words such as iayuda!, ¡auxilio! and ¡socorro! (all of them equivalent to “help!”) merit inclusion in every Spanish learner’s basic kit. With the appropriate intonation and volume, these words can make the difference for you in a difficult situation just like they did for Morena:

¡Socorro! ¡Socorro! ¡Sáquenme!
Help! Help! Get me out!
Caption 13, Yago: El puma - Part 7 of 9 

By the way, note that the word Socorro is also used as a female name in Spanish:

¿Usted por qué me dijo que Socorro estaba embarazada? -Porque está embarazada.
Why did you tell me that Socorro was pregnant? -Because she is pregnant.
Caption 54, Muñeca Brava: El encuentro - Part 2 of 3

So, if you decide to use socorro to ask for help, just be sure to use the proper intonation… You don’t want people to believe that you are simply looking for your dear friend, Socorro.

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We all have routines and actions that we "usually" carry out. We met a young lady at the El Aula Azul Language School in San Sebastian, Spain, who typically does the same things every day.

Yo normalmente me levanto a las siete de la mañana.

I normally wake up at seven in the morning

Caption 1: El Aula Azul - Actividades Diarias

 
Silvia "normally" gets up at seven, expressed in Spanish much the same as we would in English. 
However, where we English speakers tend to use the adverb "usually," Spanish speakers opt for the present tense of soler—a verb that means "to be accustomed to."

Silvia tells us:

Suelo ducharme con agua caliente.

I usually take a hot shower.

Caption 2: El Aula Azul - Actividades Diarias

She "is accustomed to" showering with hot water; it is what she usually does.

Después, suelo lavarme los dientes en el baño, y después desayuno.

After that, I usually brush my teeth in the bathroom, and then have breakfast.
Caption 3: El Aula Azul - Actividades Diarias 

Then, she usually brushes her teeth in the bathroom, it's what she is accustomed to doing. Notice that in Spanish people "wash" (lavarse) their teeth. It's possible to use cepillarse (to brush), which is closer to the English, but lavarse is the more common way to express this activity.

This is also a good time to remind ourselves that Spanish tends not to use possessive pronouns when talking about body parts. Notice that Silvia says that she brushes "los dientes," not "mis dientes." We discussed this before in the lesson "Ojo - Keep an eye on this lesson."

Speaking of past lessons, we also took a look at soler before, but focusing on the imperfect tense, solía—which indicates that someone "was accustomed to" doing something, typically expressed in English as "used to.”

Pura palabra... pura palabra... nos divertimos a puras cosas de puro hablar

Merely words... merely words... we have fun just by talking

caption 18, La Banda Chilanguese:  El habla de México - Part 2 of 3



Have you checked out the construction workers from Mexico City that we are callingLa Banda Chilanguese? These guys really do have a lot of fun just chewing the fat!



One of the ways they and other Mexicans spice up their conversation is through the use of refranes. A refrán is a popular saying or expression.



We see an example when aluminum worker Antonio says:



Voy a ir a darle porque es mole de olla

I’m going to get down to it, because it’s “mole de olla”

caption 29, La Banda Chilanguese: El habla de México - Part 1 of 3



This is from the refrán “A darle que es mole de olla”  which means “Get down to it [the task] because it’s hard and arduous.” Why this analogy to mole de olla? Because preparing mole de olla (literally “mole in a pot,” a type of beef stew) is hard work and time-consuming. (For those of you far from the gastronomic border, we are talking about “mo-lay,” a genre of Mexican sauces—not the funny-looking mammal known in Spanish as  topo).



The Mexican Institute of Sound also makes use of a popular saying:



Si te cae el saco, póntelo pa´ bailar

If the jacket suits you, wear it to dance

caption 5, Mexican Institute of Sound: Alocatel



This is a play on another popular refrán, Si te queda el saco, póntelo which literally means “if the jacket suits you, wear it.” In English we have a similar expression which expresses the same thing, “If the shoe fits, wear it.” It means, “if you are worried that we are talking about you, it is because you think it applies to you, so accept it and don’t complain.” 



Here are two more refranes that you might hear when visiting Mexico:



Entre menos burros, más olotes

The fewer the donkeys, the more cobs of corn 



When would you say this? When some members of a party have to leave... the consolation is that there is more food and drink left for those who stay. 



But what if more guests arrive than expected, and rations run low?



A falta de pan, tortillas

When there’s no bread, tortillas will do



This expression is used to express that we must make do with what we have.



Aside: It’s interesting to note that the well-known English expression “the more, the merrier,” as it was first recorded in 1520, contained a corollary that echoes the same sentiment as “entre menos burros...” The complete expression was this: "The more, the merrier; the fewer, the better fare" (meaning "with fewer there would be more to eat").

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We all have routines and actions that we "usually" carry out. We met a young lady at the El Aula Azul Language School in San Sebastian, Spain, who typically does the same things every day.

Yo normalmente me levanto a las siete de la mañana.

I normally wake up at seven in the morning

Caption 1: El Aula Azul - Actividades Diarias

 
Silvia "normally" gets up at seven, expressed in Spanish much the same as we would in English. 
However, where we English speakers tend to use the adverb "usually," Spanish speakers opt for the present tense of soler—a verb that means "to be accustomed to."

Silvia tells us:

Suelo ducharme con agua caliente.

I usually take a hot shower.

Caption 2: El Aula Azul - Actividades Diarias

She "is accustomed to" showering with hot water; it is what she usually does.

Después, suelo lavarme los dientes en el baño, y después desayuno.

After that, I usually brush my teeth in the bathroom, and then have breakfast.
Caption 3: El Aula Azul - Actividades Diarias 

Then, she usually brushes her teeth in the bathroom, it's what she is accustomed to doing. Notice that in Spanish people "wash" (lavarse) their teeth. It's possible to use cepillarse (to brush), which is closer to the English, but lavarse is the more common way to express this activity.

This is also a good time to remind ourselves that Spanish tends not to use possessive pronouns when talking about body parts. Notice that Silvia says that she brushes "los dientes," not "mis dientes." We discussed this before in the lesson "Ojo - Keep an eye on this lesson."

Speaking of past lessons, we also took a look at soler before, but focusing on the imperfect tense, solía—which indicates that someone "was accustomed to" doing something, typically expressed in English as "used to.”

Se me ha olvidado quién soy yo
I have forgotten who I am
Caption 2: Cienfue - Medio Alcohólico Melancólico

As English speakers, we might be wondering why “I have forgotten,” in the caption above, isn’t using the first person (yo or "I") conjugation of haber, as in [yo] he olvidado... 

In fact, Cienfue could have sung precisely that, which would be the most “English-like” way of expressing his thought:

[yo] he olvidado quién soy yo
I have forgotten who I am

Another alternative would be the pronominal (think “reflexive”) form, olvidarse:

[yo] me he olvidado de quién soy yo
I have forgotten who I am

Note that the pronominal option requires a “de” after olvidado. The reason for this is that olvidarse, like most pronominal verbs, does not take a direct object, while olvidar is “transitive”—meaning it does (and must) take a direct object. Native speakers often just “know” this instinctively.

Cienfue doesn’t opt for either of these, rather going with what, to English speakers, will be the most “foreign” (though commonplace in Spanish) construction, olvidársele. Olvidársele is what is known as the "impersonal" (or “terciopersonal,” third person) construction of olvidarse. 

In contrast to what we are accustomed to in English, the subject of the sentence is the thing forgotten, while the person doing the forgetting is expressed as an indirect object (signified by the le appended to olvidarse). Something "gets forgotten" (passive voice) "by someone."

So, when Cienfue sings,

Se me ha olvidado quién soy yo

the subject of the sentence is “quién soy yo” (who I am) and the indirect object is “me” (me).

Cienfue is most literally saying:
“ ‘Who I am’ has been forgotten by me”

Most Spanish speakers, even if pressed, will find precious little (if any) difference in meaning amongst the three possible constructions. There are definitely regional as well as personal preferences.

It can also be argued that there are nuanced differences in emphasis. For example, the “impersonal” form places the least “blame” on the person doing the forgetting. This type of verb construction has even been called sin culpa (without blame), and it’s not the first time we’ve encountered it

in our discussions.

What if you want to simply say “I forgot.”? (e.g. in response to Por qué no fuiste a trabajar? Why didn’t you go to work?)

Olvidé. INCORRECT (requires a direct object.)
Lo olvidé. (I forgot.) (direct object pronoun lo refers to “work”)
Me olvidé. (I forgot)
Se me olvidó. (I forgot.)

Let’s cap this off with a few more examples of each possible olvidar constructions: transitive (the most “English-like”, and perhaps least common), pronominal (looks like “reflexive”) and impersonal:

You forget that I am the boss?
¿Olvidas que yo soy el jefe?
¿Te olvidas de que yo soy el jefe?
¿Se te olvida que yo soy el jefe?

Maria forgot to pick up her cat.
Maria olvidó recoger su gato.
Maria se olvidó de recoger su gato.
A Maria se le olvidó recoger su gato.

Jorge forgot his money.
Jorge olvidó el dinero.
Jorge se olvidó del dinero.

[In some cases, like this one, the pronominal form alters the meaning slightly. “Jorge forgot about the money,” or even “Jorge kissed the money goodbye.”]

A Jorge se le olvidó el dinero.

Now is a good time to catch up on (or review) these related lessons:

Accidental Grammar
Caer Bien: To Like It
Gustar: To Like, to Please, to Taste
“Le” in Verbs Like Gusta

LoMásTv viewer Donnie (dryanespanol) wrote and asked:

In "Fiesta en Miami," - Antonio pronounces the "h" when he says "hace." I have always been told this is a cardinal sin. Please explain.

That's a good question! Does the Canary Islander Antonio Polegre really pronounce the "h" in "hace"? Well, we took a listen and it SEEMS like he does! What is going on? 

One of the first things we notice is that, in caption 21, when Antonio says hice mis amigos ("I made my friends"), we do NOT hear any "h" sound in hice. So why would Antonio pronounce hice correctly but not hace? We also notice that he didn't pronounce the final s in mis nor in amigos -- a common enough practice in many regions, and, oddly enough, perhaps a telling clue.

Antonio uses hace four times in the video (twice in caption 27 and twice in caption 29), each time as part the two word combination nos hace; and each time it really does sound like he is pronouncing the "h" in hace.

We did a little research to see if perhaps "Canarian" Spanish makes an exception to the "never pronounce the 'h'" rule. We don't find such an exception, but we do find another characteristic of Canarian Spanish echoed in a number of places, such as wikipedia:

/s/ debuccalization. As is the case with many varieties of Spanish, /s/ debuccalized to [h] in coda position.

Obviously not written for the layman! A little more research tells us that "debuccalization" is a linguistics term that describes a sound being "reduced" to an "h sound" (e.g. the "h" in "high"), and that the "coda" position is the final position in a syllable, after the vowel. 

So, if Antonio is "debuccalizing" the final "s" in nos, which produces an "h sound," then perhaps what we are hearing is not the "h" in hace but rather the "debuccalized /s/" (i.e. "h sound") at the end of "nos"! Could it be?

Let's look at caption 29:

y al final yo considero que todo nos une, todo nos hace... todo nos hace ser humanos 
and, in the end, I consider that everything unites us, everything makes us... everything makes us human 
caption 29 - Fiesta en Miami - Antonio

It's not as strong, but we think we can also MAYBE hear an "h sound" in nos une, almost coming out as 'no [h]une," and if that's true it supports the debuccalization theory. 

Further, he does not pronounce the "h" in humanos (just as he doesn't the one in hice)-- so clearly it's not the case that he is in the habit of pronouncing every "h" that starts a Spanish word.

A Dominican friend of ours tells us that not only does Antonio's pronunciation of "nos hace" sound perfectly natural to him, but that he can think of many similar "debuccalization" examples in Dominican speech. In fact, he thought that Antonio's Spanish sounds more like that of the Caribbean than (what he considers) that of Spain. This makes sense, because linguists tells us that early Canarian settlers in the region had a great amount of influence in what we know now as "Caribbean Spanish." 

No wonder Antonio feels right at home in Miami!

Spanish speakers in many regions are known for (in one way or another) reducing, softening, or "aspirating" their s's (or, as many frustrated learners would say, "dropping them" entirely). In fact, one of our resident experts, a guru of Spanish (though his students in Mexico City call him "professor"), told us that Antonio "is aspirating the s in nos, which could sound as if he were pronouncing the h in hace to someone who is not a native Spanish speaker." 

We came across a "Voices en Español" podcast which discusses the "aspirated s," as well as some other Spanish consonant sounds that are a challenge to English speakers. Have a listen!
http://spanish-podcast.com/2008/04/04/spanish-consonants

Did you see the beautiful deck of playing cards drawn by Antonio Vargas, depicting the conquistadors as well as the three big historical tribes of Mexico (Maya, Olmec, and Aztec)? He explains to us that, although very scholarly, the Mayans were no slouches on the battlefield:

Y también se ponían sus buenos catorrazos, pero eran un pueblo de mucho conocimiento...
And they also gave good blows, but they were a people of much knowledge...
Caption 29, Antonio Vargas: Artista - Ilustración - Part 2

Have a look at one of our previous lessons,  —azo: a painful suffix, and you will learn that the suffix "-azo" gives the meaning "a blow/hit from." For example un palazo is a hit with a stick (palo) or a shovel (pala), and a tortazo is what you receive when you get in the way of a moving torta (cake)!

So what about these catorrazos that Antonio refers to, and that we translated simply as "blows"? Sources tell us that the root word is cate, a rather obscure Spanish word synonymous with golpe, and which itself means "hit" or "blow,"—which would give us a "blow" by way of a "hit" (or a hit by way of a blow). Obviously a bit redundant!

Catorrazo is very colloquial, and is primarily heard in Mexico. In actuality, bilingual dictionaries define it as simply a "punch," a "blow," or even "a hit with a stick or billy club."

Here's an interesting tidbit: Since the word for "fist" is puño, we might be tempted to also try puñazo for "punch." However, the word you are most likely to hear (and what you will find in the dictionary) is slightly different, "puñetazo." However, puñazo is also seen occasionally, and, in Latin America, the word puño itself doubles for "punch" as well.

  ...pasó apenas un año o una cosa así, y... ...hardly a year or so passed, and...
Caption 11, Biografía: Pablo Echarri - Part 1
  Apenas can also mean "just," as in "only." You may have picked this up when watching Shakira's latest tantalizing video, "Loba."

La vida me ha dado un hambre voraz y tú apenas me das caramelos
Life has given me a voracious hunger and you just give me candy
Caption 10, Shakira: Loba

Our recent interview with illustrator Antonio Vargas brings us another use of apenas you might be less familiar with:

Este restaurante todavía no existe; apenas se va a hacer. This restaurant doesn't exist yet; it is about to be built.
Caption 2, Antonio Vargas: Artista - Ilustración - Part 1
When placed before a future tense phrase, apenas often conveys the message that the action is just about to happen, or is on the verge of happening.
Arturo Vega, the famous Ramones' lighting and logo designer, uses apenas this same way when he predicts the rise in popularity of Latin American rock bands.
  Yo creo que apenas va a empezar. 
I believe it's just about to start.
Caption 13, Arturo Vega: Entrevista - Part 5
Keep your eyes and ears open for still more interesting uses of apenas. We will, too, and bring them to you in future lessons.

Le encanta el poder y le atrapa la noche
She loves power and the night ensnares her
Caption 6, Chayanne—Lola

The Spanish verb encantar literally means "to enchant" or "to delight greatly," so when Chayanne sings "le encanta el poder," he means to say that "power enchants her" or "power delights her." In English we would simply say "she loves power." If this looks a lot like the way we use gustar (to please) when we want to say someone "likes" something, that's because encantar belongs to a family of verbs known as "verbs like gustar." These verbs always take an indirect object pronoun, usually to refer to the person who in the English version would be the subject, and in this example the "le" is the indirect object pronoun (her), referring to "Lola."

Atrapar/"to trap; to ensnare" is NOT a "verb like gustar," but Chayanne, in the interest of lyrical flow, seems to be doing his best to set it up like one. First, notice he is putting the subject la noche/"the night," after the verb atrapa/"ensnares" (a bit unusual, but not incorrect). Secondly, he is referring to Lola using the indirect object pronoun "le," but in this case it is really acting as a direct object pronoun. You can tell because it answers the question "what?" about the verb ("The night ensnares 'what?' It ensnares her") rather than the question "to whom?" or "for whom?" which would call for an indirect object pronoun.

Note that, unlike indirect object pronouns, the direct object pronouns in Spanish DO have gender distinctions, "lo" for him and "la" for her. Chayanne could have expressed the same sentiment by putting the subject before the verb and using the proper direct object pronoun, making it clearer for most Spanish learners:

La noche la atrapa.
The night ensnares her.

Strictly speaking, "le" is not to be used as a direct object at all, but Chayanne, like a great many of his fellow Spanish speakers, IS using "le" as a direct object. The phenomenon of using the indirect object pronoun "le" (or its plural "les") where you technically should have used a direct object pronoun is known as "leísmo," and its use varies by region. It is common enough that it is not always heard as "wrong" by a great many Spanish speakers, and there are even a few cases where "le" is seen, even by the strictest grammar mavens, as an acceptable alternate to the "proper" direct object pronouns.

These "acceptable" cases of leísmo usually involve the substitution of "le" for the masculine direct object "lo," but Chayanne is substituting "le" for the feminine direct object "la"—which, while not entirely unknown in colloquial Spanish, is usually not considered "acceptable" by those with learned opinions on such matters (such as the RAE).

Further reading:
http://spanish.about.com/library/weekly/aa081301a.htm
http://buscon.rae.es/dpdI/SrvltGUIBusDPD?lema=leísmo

Carambola: more than tricky pool


We already know Chayanne from Provócame, where he portrays a shy stable hand who also sings the show's sanguine theme song. Now we encounter his wilder side, singing about Lola, a jet-set party-loving socialite who might even be a bit dangerous:

Como disfrutas la carambola, Lola.
How you enjoy deceit, Lola.
Caption 15, Chayanne—Lola

But how does carambola translate as "deceit?"

The usage evolves from a billiards shot (known in English as a cannon), whereby the cue ball ricochets off its target and hits a third ball, seemingly by chance, in a way that's beneficial to the player. The word comes from a pocket-less type of billiards known in English as carom billiards, and in Spanish as billar de carambolas (or just carambolas) where these types of rebounding shots are standard and can be amazing to watch.

So when someone (like Chayanne's Lola) plays her hand to achieve some benefit and makes it look like an accident, she is doing una carambola. A skillful billiards player bounces off one ball to hit another, and a skillful conman sets a trap that does not directly point back to him.

Estoy seguro que los políticos están haciendo carambola.
I'm sure that the politicians are doing something illicit.

However, not all uses of the term have negative overtones. Because the carambola shot appears to be fortuitous by happenstance, de carambola can also simply refer to chance, good luck, or "dumb luck."

Vine a recoger unos papeles y me encontré con Camilo de carambola.
I came to pick up some papers and I found Camilo by chance.

Pateó al arco, el balón golpeó en un defensor y entró de carambola.
He kicked toward the goal; the ball hit a defender and went in by luck.

Spanish words that have an "s+consonant" near the beginning pretty much all start with an "e" as the first letter. Certainly you noticed that the language is "español" and not "spañol"? Or that the country from whence it all came is España (not Spaña)? Looking again to Calle 13 for clues, we hear:

Destápate, quítate el esmalte.
Show yourself, remove your nail polish.
Caption 3, Calle 13, Atrévete.

In the word "esmalte" (nail polish), there is an "s+consonant" near the beginning of the word, but, in line with norms of Spanish, it is preceded by an "e."

Modern life causes "stress" in English speakers but Spanish speakers experience "estrés." Why? It's because when this English word made its way into Spanish, it conformed to a typical Spanish pattern.  Likewise, when a shop that sells long bread rolls filled with meats and toppings opens up on Old San Juan, Residente and his buddies will no doubt be happy to grab "sandwiches" (or "saandweeches") at "Subway" (or "SOOBway"). The beginning "s" sounds in "subway" and in "sandwich" are no problem, because they are followed by vowels: "u" and "a", respectively --  a pattern Spanish speakers are well accustomed to. ¿Sí o no? -¡Supongo que sí!

Keep an ear open for Spanish words that begin with an "s" and with an "es." Does the theory fit? We hope so, or it will be an escándalo!

Side note: On the other side of the coin, the "es + consonant" phenomenon runs so deep in Spanish-language phonetics, and so many English "s" words have a corresponding similar Spanish "es" word, that Spanish speakers learning English sometimes mistakenly that think that "es + consonant" is only a Spanish-language thing. This will lead them to say specially for especially, state for estate, and streme for extreme, thinking that the "e"s are a hangover from their Spanish pronunciation. You just have to remember Ricky Ricardo from I Love Lucy, the Cuban immigrant musician and band leader who was always ready to admonish Lucille Ball's character with "Lucy! You've got some splainin' to do!

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/

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."