The verb ‘tener’
There are many expressions that use the verb ‘tener’ (often in English these use the verb ‘to be’). It is a nice trick to use them, because once you have learnt to conjugate ‘tener’, all you have to do is add the appropriate word, and you have another verb!
For example, ‘tener suerte’ is ‘to be lucky’, so to say ‘I am lucky’, you simply conjugate ‘tener’ in the first person singular present, ‘tengo’, and then add ’suerte’, ‘tengo suerte’. The great thing is that you can put ‘tener’ into whatever tense you want, and then add ’suerte’. So, ‘has tenido suerte’ would be ‘you have been lucky’, and ‘tendrás suerte’ would be ‘you will be lucky’.
Other expressions are:
Tener razón - to be right
Tener X años - to be X years old
Tener calor - to be hot
Tener frío - to be cold
Tener hambre - to be hungry
Tener sed - to be thirsty
Tener cara - to be cheeky
Tener cuidado - to be careful
Tener éxito - to be successful
Tener miedo - to be scared
Tener prisa - to be in a hurry
Can anyone come up with some conjugated examples?
Spanish Recipe Book
If you would like to try a few Spanish dishes, flip through this book for some inspiration
‘Beben agua en el mismo jarrito’.
This literally means that they drink water from the same jug, and the equivalent idiom in English might be ‘they’re as thick as thieves’.
PS: The answer to the previous idiom ‘comer frijoles…’ was ‘his bark is worse than his bite’.
LESSON OF THE MONTH - November
Idiom: ‘Sacarse el gordo’. ‘El Gordo’ is the Spanish nickname for the massive national lottery that they have in Spain at Christmas. So, ‘to draw the fat one’ has an equivalent in English: ‘To hit the jackpot’.
Lesson (beginners)
Auxiliary verbs (Part II)
In the last newsletter, we looked at some uses of auxiliary verbs, and we saw that very often we use an auxiliary in English where it is not necessary in Spanish. However, we said at the end that there were two examples of auxiliary verbs being used in the same way in both languages.
The first example encompasses all the ‘perfect’ tenses, and uses the verb ‘to have’ in English, and ‘haber’ in Spanish. Thus, ‘he comido’ is ‘I have eaten’, and ‘has hecho’ is ‘you have done’. The construction is the same in both languages in that you have the auxiliary verb followed by the past participle. One slight difference is that you can split the two in English, as in ‘I have already eaten’, whereas you would not normally do that in Spanish, ‘ya he comido’.
The second example is the ‘continuous’ tenses, which in Spanish use ‘estar’ (and in English ‘to be’) in the appropriate tense, and then the present participle. Thus, ‘estoy escribiendo’ is ‘I am writing’, and ‘estamos comiendo’ is ‘we are eating’.
Lessons (advanced)
Saying ‘very’
1) The obvious first example is the word ‘muy’, and is the one used on most occasions. As you speak more and more Spanish, however, you will want to vary your language, and this is a good place to start. You may want to say ‘very, very, very…’, and saying ‘muy, muy, muy…’ can get a trifle monotonous!
2) Putting the suffix ‘…ísimo’ on the end of adjectives is an excellent way of varying your language, and also conveys the adjective to a greater degree. ‘Él es guapísimo’ – ‘he is extremely good-looking’. ‘La casa fue carísima’ – ‘the house was extremely expensive’.
3) Putting the prefix ‘super’ ahead of the adjective also conveys this meaning. ‘Estoy super cansado’ – ‘I am super tired’, ‘ella es super alta’ – ‘she is very tall’.
4) ‘Sumamente’ has the same effect, perhaps even more so, equivalent to the English ‘highly’. ‘Él es sumamente inteligente’ – ‘he is highly intelligent’.
Have a go to spice up your language. I’ve found that there’s nothing like a bit of exaggeration to get a conversation flowing!
Light look at Alicante
My good friend Tony has done some videos of his trips to Spain so that he can practice his Spanish commentaries. Here is one he has done of the Lemon Express - a train trip from Alicante to Benidorm. At the very end of this video, he has included a short clip of your’s truly when he came to visit us one day during his holiday.
Trip to Granada
Here is a video we took of our trip to Granada - included is a video of the Alhambra Palace and the ski slopes in Sierra Nevada. The video is about 10 minutes long. Please leave comments if you enjoyed viewing it. Click on the your preferred play choice below.
LESSON OF THE MONTH - October
Lesson (beginners)
Auxiliary verbs
Here are a few extra notes on auxiliary verbs for beginners.
The differences between the Spanish and the English use of auxiliary verbs cause a lot of difficulty, and although I have mentioned this concept on the SLS videos, it is worth doing a recap here.
An auxiliary verb is used with another verb, and helps that verb with its meaning. For example, ‘I have written’ has the auxiliary verb ‘I have’, and then another verb, ‘written’. The word ‘written’, on its own, would not be very helpful. It is the auxiliary verb that gives you a lot of the information of its meaning.
In English we use a lot of auxiliary verbs, and in Spanish not so many. Herein lies the problem. There are lots of cases where you use one in English, but you don’t in Spanish. Let me give you some examples.
To make the future tense in English, you use the auxiliary verb ‘will’ with the appropriate verb. In Spanish, you simply put the appropriate ending on the verb, and this gives you the future tense. The same thing happens with the conditional tense. In English we use the auxiliary verb ‘would’, and then the verb, whereas in Spanish you use another ending.
If you have looked at the videos on questions and negatives, you will have seen other examples. To form these sentences in English, we use the auxiliary verb ‘to do’, whereas you simply inflect your voice to create a question, and use the word ‘no’ to form a negative.
However, there are two examples where the English and Spanish use of auxiliaries are similar, but I will look at those in the next newsletter.
Lessons (advanced)
Leismo – breaking the rules
In my lessons on Object Pronouns, I advised you to use the pronoun ‘le’ for all 3rd person indirect object pronouns, and for all 3rd person direct object pronouns where you were talking about a person (be it male or female). I said at the time that there were variations of this usage throughout the Spanish speaking world, but that this was the easiest way of learning the object pronouns.
It might be worth for those of you who have been using object pronouns for a while going through the other variations that you might hear, so that you aware of the distinctions. These distinctions only apply to direct object pronouns.
Very often people use ‘lo’ for masculine people and things, and ‘la’ for feminine people and things. Thus ‘I see him’ would be rendered ‘lo veo’, whereas I told you it would be ‘le veo’. ‘I see her’ would be ‘la veo’, whereas I would say ‘le veo’. You can see that, in this particular example, there is more scope for ambiguity in my version, but firstly this is almost always sorted out by context, and secondly, this possible ambiguity is more than made up for by the fact that my way is much easier to learn in the first place! By the way, these points also include the plural variations of all these pronouns.
Finally, it has to be said that you may read, and certainly hear other deviations from these notes. You may hear ‘lo’ and ‘la’ for indirect object pronouns, and you may hear ‘le’ used for masculine direct objects. In contrast to the former examples above, these latter examples have not been deemed acceptable by the Spanish Royal Academy, and thus are considered beyond the pale (or substandard in grammar speak!).
Visit to Madrid
Travelling first class by train from Alicante to Madrid has to be recommended. As soon as the train smoothly sets off and you are settled in your comfortable allocated seat, you are offered a glass or orange, followed swiftly by your personal earphones for the DVD show or radio and selection of Spanish newspapers. During your journey, depending on journey time, you will then be offered a snack or meal with drinks. The three and a half hours fled by whilst I enjoyed the changing scenery. I never realised that the La mancha region was so flat.
Atocha station Arrival in the Atocha station of Madrid was quite spectacular. The station is huge with a central area partitioned off for a tropical garden.
Because I had luggage, had heard about the metro pickpockets and didn’t know my way around, I opted to get a taxi to the hostal I was sharing with another ‘notesinspain’ forum member. This was a get to know each other weekend trip that the site’s owners had arranged.
Hostal Santa Cruz was the place we had plumped for. It was very centrally located, clean and with good rates. The twin bedded room was tiny, with an even tinier bathroom - but it had a little balcony that overlooked the plaza, a lovely reception room with drinks machine and the staff were friendly and helpful. We were very pleased with it, although I did have a problem sleeping at all the first night due to it being on the route of the local fire-engines and boy are those sirens loud at 4am!
That first evening, after having made my acquantances with Jan from Granada - my room-sharer, we met the other forum members in the plaza below our hostal and set off to a bar where we spent time getting to know each other whilst enjoying a plate of ham (Madrid is home for ham) and glass of tinto. Jan and I decided to explore a few more of the hundreds of bars in Madrid’s La Latina area and had a very enjoyable time getting lost and stopping off for a few more glasses of tinto!
Although Madrid has much to offer a visitor with many tourist attractions to feast their eyes on and tire their feet in, this trip for me was just about relaxing with new friends and getting a small taste of what the City is all about. The famous museums and galleries I plan to see another time on a return visit with my family. For this weekend, I was happy to just follow the plans excellently thought out by Ben and Marina from the Notes in Spain website. We all enjoyed our visits to various restauarants and bars, the beautiful Retriro park with its glass palace, a wander around Madrid, culminating in an excellent dinner in one of their favourite restaurants on Saturday night.
Madrid has much to offer the visitor and we will certainly return to explore it more in the future.
Santa Barbara Castle
My sister and friend have left after a 10 day visit from California. One of the many places we took them to during their stay was the Santa Barbara Castle in Alicante. We didn’t plan on taking them there, but were heading instead for the Arte e Imperio museum, which we had heard from an archaeologist ( who we spoke to whilst browsing the open Iberian site that we have in La Marina) was really worth a visit. http://www.marqalicante.com/web_e/e_marq.htm
Unfortunately we couldn’t find a parking spot in the busy surrounding streets for the museum, so I suggested we visit the castle instead, as the road up to it was opposite us. We drove up to the car park near the top and glad we did, as the lift is out of action at the moment. 
Mount Benacantil, on which the castle sits, commands the city from a privileged location which from early times has attracted continuous settlements. The first buildings date from the Moorish period (10th Century). Pottery from that time having been discovered on the surface. It wasn’t until the Christian Reconquest of the city that the Alicante Castle acquired its own name of Santa Barbara Caste.
Today it is very different from that of its Arabian origins. Inside one of the buildings there are three photographs showing the different stages of its development.
The views from the top are stunning, there are some little bars to rest in and some modern art exhibitions are showing in a few of the buildings. Well worth a visit in our opinion, and if you are a geocach fan, there is a cach hidden in this location. Here is a little video I put together of our visit.
Saying ‘Again’
There are three main ways of saying ‘again’, two phrases and a verb construction. The phrases are useful because they can be used in a ‘partial sentence’, that is a sentence with no verb.
1) Otra vez - this is the phrase I use the most, for no other reason than this is the phrase I use! It literally means ‘another time’, and, as I said, it can be used on its on.
2) De nuevo - this literally means ‘anew’, but does not have the formality of this word. It is interchangeable with ‘otra vez’
Here are some examples:
Voy a la playa otra vez - I’m going to the beach again
Ayer me habló de nuevo - He spoke to me again yesterday
3) Volver a + infinitive - if you have a verb in the sentence you can use this construction. If you have been following things from these sites, you will know that I love these constructions because you get two verbs for the price of one!
Ayer volvió a hablarme - He spoke to me again yesterday
¡Nunca volveré a comer eso! - I will never eat that again!
There are also some idioms that use ‘again’ in English:
1) Every now and again - de vez en cuando
2) Then again - por otra parte
3) Never again - nunca más
4) You can say that again! - ¡ya lo creo!
