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!