Introduction
The emphasis for this lesson is school, either gradeschool, secondary school,
or at a university, and what you do or find there. The numbers from 100 to
999999 are covered, regular -ar verb conjugation is introduced, you'll learn
some question-and-answer words, and you'll find out how to tell time in
Spanish.
If you're new to the Spanish lessons, you might want to check out the first
2 lessons at the Spanish Lessons Homepage.
Spanish Lesson 3 - en la escuela (at school)
This week's new words:
NOUNS
Audio: Internet Explorer,
Netscape
VERBS
Audio: Internet Explorer,
Netscape
INTERROGATIVES
Audio: Internet Explorer,
Netscape
CONJUNCTIONS
Audio: Internet Explorer,
Netscape
PREPOSITIONS
ADJECTIVES
Audio: Internet Explorer,
Netscape
Numbers 100-999.999
Audio: Internet Explorer,
Netscape
Pronunciation Notes
The g in biología and
página is a soft, throatal g sound. It does not have an
English equivalent, but it is very much like the English h in "help", except
made further back in the throat, like one was softly clearing their throat.
The j in reloj and trabajar is
pronounced in a similar manner as the g in Note 1.
There are two very similar-sounding words in this lesson -
por qué, and porque. The accent
on por qué tells you that the stress is on that syllable
(qué). In porque, the stress is on the
second-to-last syllable, which is por-; when speaking, you must
make sure you pronounce these words correctly becuase your pronunciation and
the context of the word are the only clues others will have about what you
are saying.
Regular -ar verbs
All Spanish verbs fall into one of three categories - they either end in
ar, er, or ir. Within each category, there
are regular and irregular verbs. Regular
verbs all conjugate with a similar pattern - all the new verbs in this lesson
are regular (as you'll see soon). Irregular verbs don't follow a pattern,
and each verb's conjugation has to be memorized separately - the two verbs
you learned in Lesson 2, ser and estar are irregular.
Here are the new verbs for this lesson: amar, escuchar,
estudiar, hablar, necesitar, regresar,
trabajar. These are all regular -ar verbs. Here
are the present-tense (present indicative) conjugations of them all:
Regular verbs are made up of a body (habl), and a suffix
(ar). To conjugate regular verbs, replace the infinitive suffix
(ar, er, ir) with the correct conjugation suffix
from the example conjugation for hablar above. For example, take
amar, and conjugate it:
(Hear the spoken conjugations of
hablar and amar:
Internet Explorer,
Netscape)
All verbs can be split into a body/suffix pair, but only regular verbs follow
these patterns. There are 3 different regular-verb patterns - one for
-ar verbs, one for -ir verbs, and one for -er
verbs. (In the next lesson, we'll learn the rules for regular -er and
-ir verbs.) In summary, to conjugate any regular -ar verb
in the present
(present indicative) tense, remove the -ar suffix, and add one of
the following (depending on who is the subject of the verb):
Here are complete conjugations of 2 more verbs from this lesson:
- trabajar
- yo trabajo, tú trabajas,
usted, él, ella trabaja, nosotros trabajamos,
vosotros trabajáis, ustedes, ellos, ellas trabajan
- regresar
- yo regreso, tú regresas,
usted, él, ella regresa, nosotros regresamos,
vosotros regresáis, ustedes, ellos, ellas regresan
Now that we have the conjugation for these regular -ar verbs, we can
make sentences with them, like this:
- Amo a Tanya. ("I love Tanya")
- Él trabaja en la universidad. ("He works at (in) the university")
- Nosotros escuchamos a la profesora. ("We listen to the teacher")
- Ellos estudian a las ocho. ("The men study at 8")
- Ellas hablan español. ("The women speak Spanish")
- Yo regreso a la universidad a las tres. ("I return to the university at
3 o'clock")
- ¿Estudias matemáticas? ("Do you study math?")
- ¿Necesita dinero ella? ("Does she need money?")
A - At or To, and the Personal A
In a few of the sentences above, the preposition a is used, as in
Ellos estudian a las ocho. The preposition
a translates to the English "at" or "to", depending on the sentence.
The preceeding sentence ("ellos estudian...") is an example of
a meaning "at". The sentence nosotros ecuchamos a la
profesora is an example of a meaning "to". When the a
comes before an el, as in nosotros escuchamos "a el"
profesor, the a and the el combine to form al.
So the correct way to write the preceeding sentence is: Nosotros escuchamos
al profesor.
Note that the English "at" may translate to either a or en
in Spanish, depending on the sentence. En is usually used to refer
to something being at something else, such as estoy en la
universidad - "I'm at the university". A usually refers to a
state or condition (sort of) of something, such as "at great speed", or when
referring to time, such as a la una ("at one o'clock").
In one sentence above, amo a Tanya, the a isn't either of
the above two meanings. When a person or name of a place is the direct
object of a verb (with the exception of the verb tener, "to
have"), an a is placed before the object, as in amo
a Tanya. This is known as the "personal a", and it
is required. Some more examples of the personal a:
- La profesora llama a los estudiantes. ("The teacher calls the students")
- Ella ama a él. ("She loves him")
Numbers 100 to 999.999
If you've looked at the numbers in the New Words section, you may already
have seen some patterns developing in Spanish numbers. First, the numbers
100, 200, 300, etc., all have a similar form - ciento,
doscientos, trescientos... If you look carefully, and
remember the numbers 2 through 9, you'll see that each hundred above 100 is
just "two hundreds" (doscientos), "three hundreds"
(trescientos), and so on. There are three exceptions, for
pronunciations' sake - quinientos (500), setecientos
(700), and novecientos. To form numbers in between the hundreds,
you use the numbers 1-99 you learned in the last 2 lessons, but add the
hundreds on to the front. Eleven is once, 111 is ciento
once. Three-hundred and twenty is trescientos veinte, and so
on.
Mil is Spanish for 1.000. No, this isn't "one
point zero zero zero zero", this is one-thousand. English
uses a comma to separate thousands, millions, etc., in a number. Spanish
uses the period (".") instead. In English, we would expect to see this
number: 12,399,100. In Spanish, the same number is written: 12.399.100. In
much the same way, where English uses the period to denote numbers between
whole numbers (as in "12.99"), Spanish uses a comma ("12,99"), but this will
be discussed in another lesson.
Multiples of 1000 are treated as such - 2000 is dos mil, literally
"two thousand". Three thousand is tres mil, and so on. This
pattern is the same for thousands up to 999.000 (that's nine-hundred
ninety-nine thousand), so that 50.000 is cincuenta mil, and 231.000
is doscientos treinta y uno mil. Combining these two rules for
numbers, we can read numbers like 123.456 (ciento veintitres mil
cuatrocientos cincuenta y seis) and 784.675 ( setecientos ochenta y
cuatro mil seiscientos setenta y cinco). So now, practice saying
things like:
Telling Time
Yo regreso a la universidad a las tres. Telling time in Spanish uses
only 2 forms of the verb ser: es and son. Spanish
for "it is one o'clock" is es la una. Times are always given in
the feminine form because la hora ("hour", or "the time") is feminine.
Es la is only used if you are talking about one o'clock,
since "one" is singular. For all other hours, you use son las, as in
son las seis ("It's 6 o'clock"). Minutes are expressed as numbers
after the hour, using either y or menos to represent after
or before the hour, respectively. At 15 minutes before or after the hour,
cuarto ("a fourth") is used instead of quince ("fifteen").
Likewise, at 30 minutes after an hour, media ("half") is used instead
of treinta ("thirty"). Media is never used with menos
Here are some exapmles:
- Es la una y veinte. ("It's twenty after one", literally "it's one and twenty")
- Son las dos menos diez. ("It's ten before two", literally "it's two minus
ten")
- Son las cuatro y cuarto. ("It's a quarter after four.")
- Son las cuatro menos cuarto. ("It's a quarter before four.")
- Son las diez y media. ("It's half past ten.")
- Es la una menos cinco. ("It's five (minutes) to one.")
To say that something is "at" a certain time, use a la or a
las:
- ¿A qué hora es la clase? ("At what time is the class?")
- La clase es a las nueve. ("The class is at 9 o'clock.")
- La clase es a la una. ("The class is at one o'clock.")
To ask for the time in Spanish, use ¿Qué hora es? ("What time
is it?"). To ask what time something happens at, use ¿A qué
hora...? ("At what time...?") as in ¿A qué hora es la
clase?, or ¿A qué hora regresas a la universidad?
("What time do you return to the university?").
To differentiate between AM and PM when telling time, Spanish uses de la
mañana ("in the morning"), de la tarde ("in the afternoon"),
and de la noche ("in the night") to describe what time of day being
referred to. So 9 o'clock PM becomes son las nueve de la noche,
while 9AM is son las nueve de la mañana, and 5PM is son
las cinco de la tarde.
Questions and Question Words
Asking a yes or no question
There are many ways to ask questions in Spanish. The simplest form of a
question is to use a regular sentence but either add question marks (when
written) or change the inflection (when spoken). Look at these 2 sentences:
- Marisa estudia. ("Marisa studies.")
- ¿Marisa estudia? ("Does Marisa study?")
When writing a question in Spanish, question marks occur at both the beginning
and the end of the question. The beginning question mark is always inverted,
i.e. upside-down (¿), to specify the beginning
of a question. Question marks do not need to surround the entire sentence if
the entire sentence is not a question - see the example
below. When
speaking, you can't draw little question marks to let the other person know
you're asking a question, so you must change the inflection of the sentence.
A normal Spanish sentence ends on a low inflection, as in "maRIsa esTUdia",
with capital letters denoting syllable emphasis. When asking a question, the
sentence ends with a high inflection, as in "maRIsa estudIA", much the same as
English questions.
It is also possible to change the word order when asking a question. Look
at these sentences:
- ¿Marisa estudia español?
- ¿Estudia Marisa español?
- ¿Estudia español Marisa?
All three of these sentences say the same thing, "Is Marisa studying Spanish?"
The subject of the sentence, namely Marisa, can be placed
at the beginning of the sentence, after the verb, or at the end of the
sentence, for questions only. The same rules of inflection apply as above.
It is important to note that, the second form above (¿Estudia Marisa
español?), with the subject after the verb, is the most "question-like",
and is the preferred form for asking questions of this kind. In the section
above, the proper way to ask "does Marisa study" would be ¿Estudia
Marisa?
One other common way of asking a question is to add ¿no? or
¿verdad? ("right?") to the end of a sentence. So the question above
could also be written: Marisa estudia español, ¿verdad?
("Marisa is studying Spanish, isn't she?" or "Marisa is studying Spanish,
right?").
Question words
All of these questions have implied either a yes or no answer - "Is Marisa
studying?", "Is she studying Spanish?" To ask questions that require more
than a yes or no answer, you generally have to use a question word.
Here is a list of some English question words and their Spanish equivalents:
- What - qué
- Who - quién
- When - cuándo
- Why - por qué,
- Which - cuál
- How much - cuánto(-a)
- How many - cuántos(-as)
- Where - dónde
Each question word, or interrogatve, works similarly to its English
counterpart. Perhaps the easiest way to explain how to use them is through
example sentences. Take a look at these:
- ¿Quién es Roberto? ("Who is Roberto?")
- ¿Cuándo regresa? ("When is s/he returning?")
- ¿Dónde estudia? ("Where does s/he study?")
- ¿Qué hora es? ("What time is it?")
- ¿A qué hora es la clase? ("At what time is the class?")
- ¿Cuál es la tarea? ("What is the homework (assignment)?")
- ¿Quién está en la casa? ("Who is in the house?")
- ¿Dónde está el lápiz? ("Where is the pencil?")
- ¿Por qué regresa a la escuela? ("Why do you return to school?")
- ¿En cuál universidad estudias? ("At which university do you study?")
- ¿Cuántos estudiantes estan en la clase? ("How many students are in class?")
Notice the similarity between English and Spanish? Try making your own
questions by translating the following English sentences (note that not all
of them need a question word). Type in your answer in the text box after each sentence, then
press the Translations button to compare what you typed to what the
right answers are. (Answers for users without
forms support.)
Here's your chance to see how much you know. All of these sentences you should
be able to translate either from or to Spanish, if you've gone through all
three lessons. Type in your answer in the text box after each sentence, then
press the Translations button to compare what you typed to what the
right answers are. (Answers for users without
forms support.)
Spanish Lesson 3 copyright Tyler Chambers, 1994. Written by Tyler Chambers, with
help from Fernando García-Loygorri. Proofreading by Fanny Fierro and
Fernando García-Loygorri. October 21, 1994.
(FORM)
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