Lesson 08: Colores! The basic colors

Hola, y bienvenidos a Hey Que tal? Lecciones de español gratuitas. Mi nombre es Pablo Apiolazza y el episodio de hoy va a ser colorido ya que vamos a aprender los colores!

Hi and welcome to Hey Que tal? Free spanish lessons. My name is Pablo Apiolazza and today's episode will be colorful since we're going to learn the colors!

On the last episode we were getting our bearings straight. So since we're going to watch a lot of trafic lights we can learn it's colors:

Red is ROJO
Yellow is AMARILLO
Green is VERDE

The sky is blue.

El cielo es AZUL

The wood is brown
La madera es MARRÓN

The old movies are black and white.
Las películas viejas son BLANCO y NEGRO.

The oranges are orange.
Las naranjas son NARANJA.

I can't think of anything that's violet, except violets
No puedo pensar en nada que sea VIOLETA, excepto las violetas.

Ok, this is a rather short episode, but with very important things to learn, so I'd like to keep it short because of that. Regarding Argentina, since we have the four weathers and the country is so big, we can find in our nature all the possible and most amazing colors. As a matter of fact, we hace some hills called "the seven color hill", or Cerro de Siete Colores, since they have all sorts of shades on its slopes. In Buenos Aires, the most colorful neighbourhoody is La Boca, and mostly Caminito, a strip full of colorful buildings.
Ok, this is it for today, don't forget to rate, share and comment this and other lessons on the blog heyquetal.blogspot.com, or on the facebook site, or even on tweeter.
If you want to know the name of any other color, leave a comment and I'll try to give the answer.

Well, have a nice week, stay tuned and goodbye!

Lesson 07: Orientándose, getting our bearings straight

Hola y bienvenidos a un nuevo capitulo de Hey Que tal? Lecciones de español gratuitas, mi nombre es Pablo Apiolazza y como veniamos hablando de viajar hoy vamos a hablar de orientación.
Hi and welcome to a new chapter of Hey Que tal? Free spanish lessons. My name is Pablo Apiolazza and since we´ve been talking about travelling today we´re going to talk about bearings.

When we get to a new place one of the first things we do is grab a map. Spanish for map is very easy: Mapa.
The map has cardinal points, puntos cardinales.
North is Norte
South is Sur
East is Este
and West is Oeste

When we navigate on a map, the places are either north, south, east or west of other places. For instance, in Buenos Aires, the airport is out of town, south west from the city. The way to say this is the following

En Buenos Aires, el aeropuerto está en las afueras, al sudeste de la ciudad.
In other words, the city is placed at north of the airport.

La ciudad esta al norte del aeropuerto.
If we are on the city, you wouldn´t be lying if you say "I´m in the middle of the city" Estoy en el medio de la ciudad.

Today with GPS and the internet maps getting some bearings is much easier, but nevertheless sometimes we need to ask people for directions. And when we do, they don´t express themselves in terms of north or south, but in terms of position.
The four basic are
Ahead or front, which is adelante
Back or behind, which is atrás
Left, that is Izquierda
and Right, Derecha

So let´s say we are at the obelisco in Buenos Aires, and we want to know how to go to the lakes in Palermo district. If we face north our nice helper would tell us to go straight ahead for 16 blocks, then turn left where the street ends, then straight and we´ll see the lakes on our right.
Sounds hard, right? Let´s see how to say this in spanish.
First the question.

Excuse me, how do I get to the lakes in Palermo?
Disculpá, cómo llego a los lagos de Palermo?
The answer would be
You have to go straight ahead for 16 blocks
Tenés que ir derecho unas 16 cuadras
then turn left where the street ends
después doblar a la izquierda donde termina la calle
then straight and you´ll see the lakes on your right.
después derecho y vas a ver a los lagos a tu derecha.
There are two more ways we can go besides those, and they are up, and down.
Up is Arriba
Down is Abajo

To go up is subir
and to go down is bajar

Since Buenos Aires is a rather flat city, we cannot subir or bajar that much, but if you go to a place with mountains, like Mendoza, then it makes more sense.
However, one way to give a direction is to say go up street. We use that too, saying "subí por esa calle" (go up street) or "baja por esa calle" (walk down that street).

Well, this is pretty much it for today, on the upcoming episodes we´ll learn more about specific places of Argentina, to start to learn some other things too. Don´t forget to comment, rate and share the podcasts on the website heyquetal.blogspot.com, on our facebook fansite hey que tal, or thru our tweeter
account, heyquetal. My name is Pablo Apiolazza and this is Hey que tal? Free spanish lessons.


Stay tuned, and goodbye!

Lesson 06: Adonde vamos? Places

Hola! Bienvenidos al sexto episodio de Hey Que tal? Lecciones de español gratuitas. Dado que es semana santa, y en Argentina muchos aprovechan para Tr  tomar unas pequeñas vacaciones, hoy vamos a aprender como planear un viaje.

Hi! And welcome to the sixth episode of Hey Que tal? Free Spanish Lessons. Since this is Holy Week, and in Argentina many use this chance to take some little holidays, today we're going to learn how to plan a trip.

On the last episode we learnt how to make plans to go out. Now let's push it further. Let's say we want to make a trip on Holy Week, so we would like to see where can we go. The way to ask this is the following:

Adonde vamos en Semana Santa?

Where do we go on holy week?

There could be many answers to this question. Let's see some possible answers

Vamos a la playa - Let's go to the beach.

Vamos a la montaña - Let's go to the mountain.

Vamos al río - Let's go to the river.

Vamos a las cataratas - Let's go to the falls.

As you can see, we always say "vamos a" and then the place where we want to go. The verb to go in spanish is "ir" and it is irregular. Let's see how to conjugate it.

Yo voy
Tú vas
Él va
Nosotros vamos
Ustedes Van
Ellos van

I didn´t put the vosotros form because it´s totally unused in latin american spanish, we use Ustedes instead.

If we want to travel, we have to take something to get to our destination. Let´s learn the names of the means of transport.
Car is auto
Subway is subte
Plane is avión
Train is tren
Taxi can be either taxi or remis. Remises are a special kind of taxi that has preset fees and usually are used for longer distances.
Regarding the word bus, depending on the trip that a bus makes, we have different words to define it. For the regular city bus, the name is colectivo, or in slang "bondi". The little bus that can be rented for a small group or that make a specific trip is called "combi". And the big bus that usually covers long distances are called "micro" or "ómnibus".
As you can tell, buses are a big deal in Argentina, probably because an argentinian invented the first "colectivo".

Back to planning, now that we know what to take, we need to get the tickets. So let´s say we are at the terminal, in spanish "Terminal" (or maybe on the phone) and we want to buy some tickets. This is the way to do it.

Quisiera dos pasajes para Mar del Sur para el jueves por favor.

I´d like two tickets to Mar del Sur for this thursday please.

They probably have different options to do that trip on the same day, so a probable answer to our question would be.

Tenemos cuatro que salen el jueves. Cual prefiere?

We have four that leave on thursday. Which one do you prefer?

And here is the key part. What we usually want to know is when a plane/bus/etc leaves, and when it arrives. This is the way to ask this.

A qué hora sale el micro? Y a que hora llega allá?

At what time does the bus leave? And when does it gets there?

Once we get the right one, they´ll probably ask us where do we want to seat. That´s done like this.

Ventanilla o pasillo?
which is
Window or aisle?

And our answer, if it's window: Ventanilla, por favor.

And that´s pretty much it to get a ticket. The rest is as buying a drink which we already learnt.
Finally, I´ll do a small example about a trip plan, first in spanish, and then in english, so you can try to do your own with what we learnt today.

Este año vamos a Mar del Sur para Semana Santa. El jueves a la mañana nos tomamos un taxi para ir a la terminal de ómnibus, y de ahi un micro hasta Mar del Sur. Salimos a las 8 de la mañana y llegamos a las 2 de la tarde. Nos quedamos allá cuatro días, hasta el domingo y de ahi volvemos en otro micro. Ese sale a las 5 de la tarde y llega a las 10 de la noche. 

This year we´re going to Mar del Sur for Holy Week. We´ll take a cab on thursday morning to get to the bus station, and from there a bus to Mar del Sur. We leave at 8 am and we arrive at 2 pm. We stay there for four days, until sunday and from there we come back in another bus. That one leaves at 5pm and arrives at 10pm.

On the next episode we´ll get more specific about how to go from one place to another, but for now this is enough.
Remember to rate, comment, and share either on the website www.heyquetal.blogspot.com, the facebook fansite or our tweeter account heyquetal
My name is Pablo Apiolazza and this is Hey Qué tal? Free spanish lessons.

Felices Pascuas, Happy Easter, stay tuned and goodbye!