Hey que tal needs your help

Hi! As you noticed, there was a big gap in our Free Spanish Lessons. I think it is fair for you to know why.
The first reason was personal: I moved to another city and the transition was quite complicated, due to the distance. The second one is technical, and a consequence of the first: the lessons were recorded with loaned equipment, and when I moved I had no more access to it.
Making the lessons involve a lot of work, preparing the subject, making the takes, choosing the best, editing them, transcribing the post and preparing the feed and graphics to it.
I do it because I want to help as much people as I can with this, and as a way to extend my appreciation for you, the people who´s also making an effort to learn my mother tongue. That´s why I wanted and I want it to be free.
A possible solution would be to make the site restricted, but that´s not the idea of it. I don´t intend to get rich with it.
Since right now I cannot afford to invest in this site, I´m asking you for some help. I made a pledge on this website: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/14494 to gather enough money to buy the equipment that allow me to resume with the lessons. It´s a fixed amount, and it´s not much, so once the amount is reached, the pledge is over and the lessons will hopefully continue as usual. At least I´ll do everything in my hands to make it happen, as I did before.
Thank you very much, and feel free to send me feedback and keep watching, rating and commenting on the website, heyquetal.blogspot.com, our twitter account, heyquetal, our facebook group Hey Que tal? or at the email: infoheyquetal@gmail.com
My name is Pablo Apiolazza and this is Hey Que tal? Free spanish lessons.
Have a nice week, stay tuned and goodbye!

Lesson 09: En mi cuarto. Parts of a house

Hola, y bienvenidos a una nueva lección de Hey Que tal? Lecciones de español gratuitas. Mi nombre es Pablo Apiolazza y hoy estamos un poco vagos asi que nos vamos a quedar en casa.

Hi, and welcome to a new lesson of Hey Que tal? Free spanish lessons. My name is Pablo Apiolazza and today we´re a little bit lazy so we´re going to stay home.

On this episode we´re going to learn the parts of a house or an appartment. The term home is translated as hogar, but when we go home, in Argentina we always say vamos a casa, either we live on a house or a building.

The first thing we do when we get home is to open the door. Door is puerta.
We open the door is
Abrimos la puerta.

If we live on a building (edificio) then we have to take the stairs or the elevator.
To go up the stairs is subir las escaleras.
To go up with the elevator is subir con el ascensor.
Once we get to our floor, in spanish piso, we walk thru a corridor, pasillo, to get to our appartment, departamento.

Once inside, we might go to the kitchen, cocina. to make ourselves a coffe, café. Then maybe we go to the living room, which in spanish is also living, and we watch some tv. But first, a quick shower in the bathroom (baño).
When dinner´s ready, we eat at the dining room, comedor. And when it´s time for bed, we go to our bedroom, cuarto. Maybe if we have a balcony (balcón) we can watch the stars for a while.

Let´s say everything together in spanish, assuming that we live on an appartment.

Cuando llego a casa abro la puerta.Adentro, tomo el ascensor hasta el quinto piso. Cuando bajo del ascensor, camino por el pasillo hasta mi departamento. Allí voy a la cocina y me hago un café. Después voy al living, y miro un rato la televisión, pero antes me doy una ducha en el baño.
Cuando la cena esta lista, como en el comedor. Y cuando es hora de dormir, voy a mi cuarto, y desde el balcón miro las estrellas, antes de irme a dormir.

When I get home I open the door, Once inside, I take the elevator to the 5th floor. When I get off the elevator, I walk thru the corridor until my appartment. There I go to the kitchen and I make myself a coffee. After that I go to the living, and I watch some tv, but before I take a shower at the bathroom. When the dinner´s ready, I eat at the dining room. And when it´s time to sleep, I go to my room, and from the balcony I watch the stars before I go to sleep.

All the rooms in the house are called cuartos, besides the bedroom. Cuarto is the same as room. To say bedroom, we can also say dormitorio, as in dorm, but we don´t really use that word, but plain room, or my room.
Well, this is pretty much all for today. Don´t forget to watch, rate and comment on the website, heyquetal.blogspot.com, our twitter account, heyquetal, our facebook group Hey Que tal? or at the email: infoheyquetal@gmail.com
My name is Pablo Apiolazza and this is Hey Que tal? Free spanish lessons.
Have a nice week, stay tuned and goodbye!

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!

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!