New e-mail address!

Now you can send your questions, greetings or suggestions to this new e-mail address:

infoheyquetal@gmail.com


Or as usual on the comments area underneath the episodes.

Lesson 05: Qué hacemos hoy? Days and months.

Hola, y bienvenidos a Hey Que tal? Lecciones de español gratuitas. Mi nombre es Pablo Apiolazza y dado que el podcast cumple un mes, hoy vamos a aprender los días y los meses.

Hi, and welcome to Hey Que tal? Free spanish lessons. My name is Pablo Apiolazza and since the podcast has been online for a month already, today we're going to learn the days and the months.

Before starting, I want to thank the many people that have been listening for the podcast in the last month. During this few emissions we've had visitors from more than 40 different countries, some of them really far away from Argentina, like Russia, Thailand or the Phillipines, which is awesome. Thank you very much to all the people who's been listening, and once again, I encourage you to leave comments or suggestions, this space is for you, so don't be shy, enjoy it and make use of it.

Ok, on the last lesson we've been into a bar, but since we don't want to go alone there, we need to be able to make plans with people. That's what we're going to learn today.
First of all, let's ask "what to we do today? do you have plans?" That's done like this

Qué hacemos hoy? Tenés planes?

If he or she doesn't have any plans, they will tell you

No, no tengo planes, hoy estoy libre.

Which means "No, I have no plans today, I'm free".
If not, they will say something like

Si, ya tengo planes, estoy ocupado/a.


You can see that if a boy is answering, the word will be ocupado, and if a girl is answering, it will be ocupada. Both words mean busy. That's a sneak peak of the gender issue in spanish. The whole sentence means "Yeah, I have plans already, I'm busy".

So now let's see how to make plans for the week! For that we will assume that the person's occupied today, and we will ask about tomorrow. So let's pick up from the start.

A: Qué hacemos hoy? Tenés planes?
B: Si, ya tengo planes, estoy ocupado.
A: Ah que lastima, y mañana?
That means, "what a pity, what about tomorrow?"

B: Mañana estoy libre.

That is tomorrow I´m free.
A: Buenísimo, querés ir al cine?

Great! Do you want to go to the movies?

The positive answer could be

B: Dale, me encantaría.

Yeah, I´d love to!

Now we should arrange a time of the day. A day can be splitted in three parts:
Mañana, which is morning
Tarde, which is afternoon
and Noche, which is night

So if we want to ask if he or she can go out at night, the cuestion would be:

A: Podés a la noche?

If the answer is Sí (yes) then we can set an hour, since we already know the numbers. For that we must remember that instead of saying AM and PM argentinians say de la mañana for early hours, let´s say till noon, de la tarde for afternoon hours, usually until 7.00 PM. and de la noche for the remaining hours.
So let´s build an example. "Then let´s meet at 8 PM" would be

A: Entonces nos encontramos a las 8 de la noche


If we want to set a place, it´s as easy as adding the word en and the name of the meeting point.

Entonces nos encontramos a las 8 de la noche en Palermo

So we now know how to make plans. Let´s move to the boring part, which is to remember the vocabulary. As said before, we were going to learn the days and the months, so let´s start with the days.
The spanish for week is semana and starts at
Monday, Lunes
Tuesday is Martes
Wednesday is Miércoles
Thursday is Jueves
Friday is Viernes
and then we reached to the weekend, el fin de semana, which argies colloquially call finde.
Saturday is Sábado
and Sunday is Domingo


So now that we know the days, we can learn the months.
January is Enero
February is Febrero
March is Marzo
April is Abril
May is Mayo
June is Junio
July is Julio
August is Agosto
September is Septiembre
October is Octubre
November is Noviembre
December is Diciembre


Ok, last but not least we have to know how to call the days before and after today.
The day before yesterday is called anteayer
Yesterday is ayer
Today is Hoy
Tomorrow is mañana
and the day after tomorrow is pasado mañana



So we´re ready to make plans with people! Let´s put the whole dialogue together. 

A: Qué hacemos hoy? Tenés planes?
B: Si, ya tengo planes, estoy ocupado.
A: Ah que lastima, y mañana?
B: Mañana estoy libre.
A: Buenísimo, querés ir al cine?
B: Dale, me encantaría.
A: Podés a la noche?
B: Sí
A: Entonces nos encontramos a las 8 de la noche en Palermo.
B: Dale.


Like we said on the previous podcast, Buenos Aires is a place where every single day there´s something to do, no matter the hour. On the upcoming episodes we´ll see more about making plans with further detail, but this should be enough now. Ok, we reached the end of this lesson, I hope you enjoyed it, my name is Pablo Apiolazza and this is Hey Que tal? Free spanish lessons. Remember to visit the website: heyquetal.blogspot.com, to suscribe to the rss feed or to itunes to get the weekly updates, or to our tweeter, heyquetal. 


Have a nice week, stay tuned and goodbye!

Lesson 04: San Patricio - drinks, and numbers

Hi! And welcome to the fourth lesson of Hey que tal? Free spanish lessons. My name is Pablo Apiolazza and today we´ll push the edge a little bit.

Hola y bienvenidos a la cuarta lección de Hey que tal? Lecciones de español gratuitas. Mi nombre es Pablo Apiolazza y hoy vamos a ir un poco más al límite.

Since Saint Patrick´s Day is this wednesday we´ll take this chance to learn in this lesson how to order a drink, and pay for it. So we´ll learn the numbers as well.

Dado que el día de San Patricio es este miércoles vamos a aprovechar esta oportunidad para aprender en esta lección cómo pedir un trago, y pagar por él. Así que también vamos a aprender los números.

The first thing you want to ask when you get to a bar is a table, if the place is crowded. So to ask for a table we say de following:

Una mesa para dos, por favor?

or

Tendrás una mesa para dos, por favor?

Which means Would you have a table for two, please?

If the place is not crowded, we just sit and wait. In terms of service, Buenos Aires and Argentina in general is very uneven regarding of the quality of the attention. Some places have perfect attention and manners, and some others don´t pay attention to customers at all. Sadly, sometimes that lack of attention is equalized with excelent food or drinks, so good that you bare the bad service. Many of us are used to that, so if you can take it, and you see that the waiter isn´t coming, you can call him raising your hand and saying like this:

Mozo!

Once the waiter´s here, we can ask for the menu or just for a beer. Let´s see how to ask for the menu.

Me traerías una carta, por favor?

And that is: Would you bring me a menu, please?

Once we get the menu we can say "Gracias", and take our pick. Now let´s see how to ask for a beer. There are many different ways but we´ll see three today:

Puede ser una cerveza, por favor?
Which lit. means "Can it be a beer please?"

The second is
Me traerías una cerveza, por favor?
Would you bring me a beer please?

And the third, most used and easiest:

Una cerveza, por favor
A beer please.

Of course, on seldom occasions we drink alone in bars, so let´s learn the numbers from zero to twenty. We will assume that if we have more than twenty people on the table one of them will know how to speak spanish if you need to ask for more, hehe.

So zero is CERO
One is UNO
Two is DOS
Three is TRES
Four is CUATRO
Five is CINCO
Six is SEIS
Seven is SIETE
Eight is OCHO
Nine is NUEVE
Ten is DIEZ

Eleven is ONCE
Twelve is DOCE
Thirteen is TRECE
Fourteen is CATORCE
Fifteen is QUINCE
Sixteen is DIECISÉIS
Seventeen is DIECISIETE
Eighteen is DIECIOCHO
Nineteen is DIECINUEVE
and Twenty is VEINTE.

As you might noticed, from sixteen on we have a little resemblance on the first half, every word starts with ten, and then the other number, sort of like ten and six.
If you´re really anxious to know the rest of the numbers, you should know that this same formula will be the one to make the rest of the numbers until a hundred. But we´ll see that on the next episode.

Let´s go back to the bar and our beer.

Let´s say some friends came later and we ordered our beer, if we want two more we can say it like this.

Dos cervezas más, por favor?

Two more beers, please?

Once we had enough, we can order for the check like this.

La cuenta, por favor.
or
Me traés la cuenta, por favor?

Now they will tell us the number, and probably they will ask cash or credit, so the waiter answer will be something like this:

Son 18 pesos. Efectivo o tarjeta?
Which means
It´s 18 pesos, cash or credit card?

If you´re in Argentina, you shouldn´t be so confident that they will have credit card payment in every single bar, so just in case always bring some cash with you.
So once you have the money or the card, you can say this

Aca tenés, gracias.
There you go, thank you.

Once we get our change, we can leave the tip, that is called propina, and usually is around 10% of what we had. Most of waiters will be more than happy with 10 % or more than 10 %. Some bars and restaurants already take the tip out of the bill, but most of them don´t.

Well, this was our bar night at Saint Patrick´s Day, culturally speaking celebrating Saint Patrick´s Day is something brand new for us, we´ve been doing it for the last ten years, it´s not as big as in Scotland or Boston maybe, but in some neighbourhoods like downtown some streets close so people can gather up on the street and drink outside, so it´s pretty fun. Argentinians are known for being pretty outgoing, and Buenos Aires is a city where every single day there´s something to do or somewhere to go.

So this is the end of the lesson, I hope you liked it, if you have any doubt or comment you can leave it on the website, www.heyquetal.blogspot.com
There´s also a twitter account if you want to follow the podcast, look for heyquetal on twitter and follow it for updates.
My name is Pablo Apiolazza and this is Hey que tal? Free spanish lessons.

Stay tuned and goodbye!

Lesson 03: Tú vs Vos - the big difference.

Hi, welcome to the third episode of Hey que tal? Free spanish lessons. My name is Pablo Apiolazza and today we´re going to overview one of the main differences between the regular spanish and the argentinian spanish.
In order to do this, we´ll have to make a quick stop on grammar, but don´t panic, we´ll try to stay out of it for now.

As you know, when we conjugate a verb we use person to determine who or what are we speaking to or about, in other words, to determine the subject of a sentence. There are three persons for the singular form and three for the plural.
In the original form of spanish, the persons are the following:
I is YO
You is TÚ
He is EL
We is NOSOTROS
You is VOSOTROS
They is ELLOS

It is ESO, and she is ELLA, but aside from that, let´s concentrate on the second person in both plural and singular ways.
An easy way to remember tú, is to think about the ancient english "thou". And that is because amazingly it´s a shared root.
But in latin america, since the language bent and mixed with other languages including the indigenous dialects, a new version of the second person was born: VOS.
Vos is a version that changes the conjugation of the verb. That means that it is not enough to put vos in front of a verb conjugated with tú to do it properly.

Let´s see this on examples, and in the meantime, learn the main irregular verbs.

First one is to be:
Yo soy
Tu eres
El es
Nosotros somos
Vosotros sois
Ellos son

In argentina, instead of tú eres we say VOS SOS.
Vos is an informal form of the second person. Another important thing is that VOS doesn´t have a plural version, but we neither use the VOSOTROS form. Instead of that, we use the formal version for both formal and informal, and is USTEDES.

USTEDES is conjugated in the same way as ELLOS, the third person of the plural.

For instance: USTEDES SON grandes. (You are big)

In other words, we made it complicated for the singular, but easier for the plural.

In terms of culture, "vos" is pretty much a trademark of the argentinian language, together with our pronunciation and the famous "lunfardo" slang, which is the old tango days´ slang. Argentinians are always using the informal form to speak. Generally it is not disrespectful to use it with coworkers, members of the family, or strangers, but it is a good rule to start talking in the formal form, and then we´ll probably get a very common phrase that allows us to use the vos and it sounds like this:

Por favor, podés tutearme.
or
Si querés, tuteame.

The main thing we must hear is the verb "tutear" that yeah, funny enough, literally means "to use the tú form", but in Argentina means to use the vos form. We do have a verb that means "to use the vos form", which is "vosear", but nobody ever uses it. Don´t ask me why, hehe.

So once we have the permit granted, we can use the "vos" as much as we want.

Since we´re in subject, we´ll give a little grammar spoiler, so the advaced students can have fun with the vos form. Since the origin of vos comes from vosotros, a good rule to build the vos conjugation for the regular verbs is to remove the letter "i" from the vosotros conjugation. I.e.: Vosotros tenéis - Vos tenés.
As any other language, there´s no rule for the irregular verbs, so it´s up to you to learn them. During the upcoming episodes we will see most of them anyways, so be patient.

As for the formal version, as I mentioned before we use the form "usted". Even if usted means you, it is conjugated as the third person. In the case of to be, it is "Usted es".

So this is pretty much our little trip thru the "vos" land.

Don´t forget to rate, share and review the podcast either on itunes, your favourite feed reader, or the website, heyquetal.blogspot.com
My name is Pablo Apiolazza and this is Hey Que tal? Free spanish lessons.

Stay tuned and goodbye!

El secreto de sus ojos - special podcast.

Hi! Welcome to Hey que tal? Free spanish lessons. My name is Pablo Apiolazza and today we´re having a special podcast because I want to celebrate something.
In case you don´t know, I´m a filmmaker, I worked in awarded films as La León, and Matar a Todos, and as you may know last sunday was the Academy Awards ceremony, and an argentinian movie won the best foreign language film, which of course fills me with pride.
The movie is called "El secreto de sus ojos", which literally means "the secret of his/her eyes". It is starred by Ricardo Darín, Soledad Villamil, Guillermo Francella and Pablo Rago, and it is directed by Juan Jose Campanella, a great filmmaker.
During my career I had the pleasure to meet personally Ricardo Darin to discuss about a project, and he´s a charming, simple, humble and most of all, incredibly talented actor, so I´m very happy that his movie got the biggest possible award.
For all you spanish students it´s also a great exercise to watch the film to practice, and mostly to check what we´ve been learning about how to say hi, and mostly how argentinians use the "vos" pronoun.
On the other hand, it is a great chance to learn more about the history of Argentina, and the terrible events that happened right before and during the last dictatorship.
The movie also has a couple of very funny and tipical argentinian moments and ways of speak that picture the argentinian humor very well.
As always, if you watch the film and you have any language doubt or curiosity, you can leave a comment on the website and I´ll try to answer it.
Well, that´s all for now, go watch the movie, and don´t forget to suscribe, or visit the website, www.heyquetal.blogspot.com
My name is Pablo Apiolazza and this is Hey! que tal? Free spanish lessons.

Stay tuned and goodbye!

Lesson 02: Chatting some more (Conversando un poco más)

Hi, welcome to the second episode of Hey que tal? Free spanish lessons. My name is Pablo Apiolazza and first of all I´d like to thank all the good reviews I´ve got from the first episode. This is new for me too so all comments and critics are welcome.

Today we´re going to go deeper into our first conversation, and go further into the local ways of speaking. On the last episode we learnt how to say hi, how are you, and what responses we could get from that question. Today we´re going to learn the main questions that we need to know to meet someone. So let´s begin.

The first thing we want to know is the name. So to ask "what´s your name?" we´re going to say the following:

Como te llamás?

This is a good moment to clearify something important. Since we are learning argentinian spanish, the way told  before is the informal way to ask. I don´t want to get too complicated with grammar in this episode, but you have to know that argentinians use a very unique way of second-person familiar subjective pronoun, called VOS, instead of the spanish TU. This form has a different conjugation in verbs, so the previous "llamás" is that version of the verb "llamar". The next episode will be entirely about the difference between VOS and TU.
Let´s see now the formal version of this question, which is

Cómo se llama?

Another way to say this is

Cual es su nombre? (lit: what is your name?)

Another very unique thing about argentinian spanish that we can find in this questions is the pronunciation of the double l. Instead of the spanish sound of it (something like the english "Yikes") we use the sh sound, like in "shame". This is the best way to spot an argie.

Back into the talking, there are three ways to answer this:

First one is the plain name, which doesn´t need much explination. For instance: Pablo
The second one is a long version. "Me llamo Pablo", which litteraly would mean something like "I´m called Pablo".
The third version is the other long one, and it is "Mi nombre es Pablo". My name is Pablo.

If we say Pablo, or me llamo Pablo, and we want to ask back, then we say again "y vos?". On the other hand, if we say Mi nombre es Pablo, then we should use the reply "Y el tuyo?" which means "And yours?"
You might have noticed that instead of starting with the formal version I start with the informal one. This is because most of argentinians use the informal way almost always, except in certain jobs, or with the elder. We will discuss this in more detail on the next episode. I´m going to give both ways, so here comes the formal one.

Full answers for What´s your name? are:
Pablo, y usted?
and
Mi nombre es Pablo, y el suyo?

Last, but not least, let's ask Where are you from? This is done this way:
Informal
De dónde sos?
Formal
De dónde es (Usted)?

And to answer the formula is
Soy de Buenos Aires, Argentina. which means I´m from...
or
Vengo de Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is I come from...

Of course, if you´re an english speaker, you´re not from Argentina, so let´s learn some names of the main english speaking countries, in alphabetic order.
Australia is exactly the same, but with argie accent: Australia.
Canada, as before, the same, Canadá.
England is Inglaterra
Ireland, Irlanda
United States is Estados Unidos.
Scotland is Escocia.
South Africa, Sudáfrica.

If you are from somewhere else and you want to know the name of your country, leave a comment on the blog and I´ll try to answer you.

As you can figure out by now, to ask back a question there are two ways: "y vos?" and "y usted?" for the informal and formal way.

So let´s see all together, now in context.

A: Hola, qué tal?
B: Bien, y vos?
A: Bárbaro, como te llamás?
B: Pablo, y vos?
A: Carlos. De dónde sos?
B: Soy de Buenos Aires, Argentina, y vos?
A: Yo soy de Miami, Estados Unidos.

Well, as you can see, we can already have a little chat begun. On the next episode, we´ll see the difference between tu, vos and usted, and on upcoming episodes we´ll get more conversation skills. . This is pretty much for today, I hope you enjoyed the episode, my name is Pablo Apiolazza and this is Hey que tal? Free spanish lessons.

Don´t forget to rate, share and review the podcast either on itunes, your favourite feed reader, or the website, heyquetal.blogspot.com

Stay tuned and goodbye!