Lesson 01: Hey! Que tal?

Hi! Welcome to the first episode of Hey Qué tal?, the series of free podcasts aimed to teach you spanish. My name is Pablo Apiolazza and here we're going to learn spanish from argentina, a very unique kind of spanish. Nevertheless, it's very similar to the original one, except some pronunciation, so even if you want to learn other type of spanish this podcasts will be helpfull for you too.


Besides the language itself, we're going to learn some important aspects of the culture of Argentina, and particularly Buenos Aires, such as music, localisms, traditions, foods, and all sort of things useful for the traveller or the Argentina lover.


So taking all this into consideration, lets begin with the first lesson.


Today we're going to watch the basics: how to say hello.
Everytime we meet someone we're in the need to say hello, and immediately ask "how are you?", so lets see how to say this in spanish.


Hello, how are you?
"Hola, cómo estas?"


The first time we meet someone, this is quite well, but as we already know someone we can use some other ways to say this more coloquial, and this is when the title of this podcast becomes useful.
To say (again) "Hey, how are you?" we can now say


Hey! Qué tal?


Now lets see what responses we can have to this. As you can imagine 90% of the times we will get positive answers like "great" or "fine" or "good", and then the same question back at us. So lets see them in spanish


For great we can use "Bárbaro". So the answer would be "Bárbaro, y vos?" (and you?)
For fine or good we can use "Bien". "Bien, y vos?" 
A quick tip is that if we say "Muy bien", then it means VERY good. So they (or us) can answer that.


If they ask us "y vos?" we should answer them back, so obviously we can use the same phrases, but instead of answering "and you?" over and over we can say a polite thank you. This is done by using a very important word: "Gracias".


So to summarize, we'll see the whole situation together.


A:-Hola, qué tal?


B:-Bien, y vos?


A:-Bien, gracias!


Finally, some people (or maybe we) are not felling so great sometimes, so maybe they don't feel like saying that. To answer "not so good" we can say "Más o menos" (lit.: more or less).
In very rare situations, we can even hear a "Mal" (bad). Or even a "Pésimo". Awful. But if we say or hear something like this we're probably getting ready to have a long talk, and we're not quite ready to do that yet.


But don't worry, we will eventually while we keep listening the "Hey que tal?" podcasts.


So this is pretty much it for today, I hope you enjoyed it, my name is Pablo Apiolazza and this is Hey Qué tal? Free spanish lessons.


Don't forget to visit our blog: heyquetal.blogspot.com


Stay tuned and goodbye!


Mp3 file