Politesses : révision et nouveau verbe « tomar »

¡Hola, bienvenidos! Welcome back to Spanish for Beginners with Lingua. This is lesson twelve of course one. I'm your teacher, Isabella. Let's get started.

First, let's review the phrases that we learned in the previous lesson, which was a review of lesson one. Repeat after me. Soy de. Mi nombre es. ¿Cuál es tu nombre? Encantado / Encantada. ¿Qué tal? Bien, ¿y tú?

All right, very good. Today, as I told you last week, is a review of lesson two. It's much like our previous review, but this week I only have one new word for you. But it's an important word, a really good one to know if you plan on going to any cafés or restaurants. So let's get into it.

This lesson was all about manners. I pretty much taught you all the words for manners already, so we can go through these rather quickly.

Por favor. Por favor. This is "please". Por favor.

Muchas gracias. Muchas gracias. Thank you very much. Muchas gracias. Or just "gracias", "thank you". Excellent.

De nada. De nada. "You're welcome". Excellent.

Lo siento. Lo siento. "I'm sorry". Lo siento.

Disculpe. Disculpe. "Excuse me". Disculpe.

Perdón. Perdón. "Excuse me" or "I'm sorry". Perdón.

Con permiso. Con permiso. "Pardon me" or "excuse me". Now, I taught you the differences between these four apologies in our previous lesson on lesson two. Do you remember the differences? Do you remember when to use each word appropriately? Yes, no? Well, I'm going to test you. I'm not going to remind you what the differences are because we have already learned that, and we're going to just jump right into the quiz. La prueba.

So : you are walking down the street and accidentally bump into a stranger. You say… "perdón". "Perdón" is a good word to use when apologizing for something very small. But remember, "perdón" and "lo siento" can be interchangeable.

Next : you are having a conversation with someone and want to interject. You say… "con permiso". Remember, literally this means "with permission" : you're asking their permission to interject, to add your own point to the conversation.

Next : you are walking in your house and accidentally step on your dog's tail. You say… "lo siento". Lo siento. "I'm sorry". And if you've never had the experience of accidentally stepping on your dog's tail and your dog yelps, then this example isn't for you. But it's heartbreaking and it makes you feel horrible. And you just have to say "lo siento".

You are in a store and need the clerk's help to find something. To get their attention, you say… "disculpe". Disculpe. Remember, we're being polite here, so no whistling or yelling, just a simple "disculpe", "excuse me". Disculpe.

Good. In this lesson, we also learned how to order a drink, and we learned a few drink names, starting with "el café". A coffee or "café". El café.

Next, we learned "el agua". El agua. Now in the previous lesson, I didn't have the "el" here. It is a little confusing, I won't lie to you. I told you in the past that if there is an A at the end of the word, it's probably going to be feminine. And while that's true 98 % of the time, this is one of the few occasions where it's not true. "Agua" is actually a masculine word grammatically here, so we say "el agua". Why? Because of pronunciation : "la agua" sounds bad. The rule kicks in to use "el" instead.

"La cerveza". La cerveza. It can be a little difficult to do the "th" sound, so you can always say "la cerveza" (with an "s" sound). Both are fine. "Beer". Cerveza.

Good. I taught you this expression, "¿me pones?". "¿Me pones un agua? ¿Me pones un café? ¿Me pones una cerveza?". This means "can you bring me?". But there's another way to order in Spanish. There are several ways to order, but one of the more common ways, especially when ordering a drink, is to say "tomo". This literally means "I take", the infinitive being "tomar". And you remember our conjugations : o, as, a, amos, áis, an. "Tomar", "to take", becomes "tomo" : I take, or a better translation would be "I'll take". I'll take a coffee : "tomo un café". I'll take a beer : "tomo una cerveza". Makes sense, yeah?

Let's practice. We are in a restaurant. You are the customer, I am the waitress. I need you to call me over and ask for something.

How did you do? If I spoke a little fast, go ahead and try again. But here are the answers. Say it with me. "Disculpe, sí, tomo un agua." Or "tomo un café, por favor." "Sí, claro." "Gracias." "De nada."

For the record, "claro" is just a way of saying "of course", "yes, of course". "Sí, claro".

OK, good. Here's our review for today, very simple : tomar / tomo. Good. You will see this word pop up a lot when it comes to going out for drinks. It's always "tomar" to get something. Very, very common. So you'll see this more when we get more into ordering and food in later lessons.

All right, that's it for the review of lesson two. I hope it was useful. I hope you have a better idea of all the apologies and that a lot of this is starting to connect.

In the next lesson, we will review lesson three. You see the pattern here. We won't review every single lesson so far : some will be combined, some will be skipped. But next time will be the review of lesson three. Until then, hasta luego.