Coffee Break Spanish - CBS 2.09 | Describing people

Episode Date: March 25, 2010

This week on Coffee Break Spanish we’re taking a further look at adjectives and we’ll be doing more practice using adjectives and making them agree with the word they describe. We’ll also take a look at describing people, including talking about hair and eyes. Please note that lesson 09 of Season 2 was originally known as lesson 209 of Coffee Break Spanish. We have renumbered the lessons of each season as lessons 1-40 to make things more simple for our listeners.This season of Coffee Break Spanish features a total of 40 lessons, all of which will be included in the podcast feed. Just stay subscribed to the podcast to enjoy each episode. If you’d like to benefit from video versions, lesson notes and bonus audio materials, you can access the premium version of Coffee Break Spanish in the Coffee Break Academy.Don’t forget to follow Coffee Break Spanish on Facebook where we post language activities, cultural points and review materials to help you practise your Spanish. Remember - a few minutes a day can help you build your confidence in the language. Access the Coffee Break Spanish Facebook page here.If you’d like to find out what goes on behind the scenes here at Coffee Break Languages, follow @coffeebreaklanguages on Instagram.You can also check out our Coffee Break Spanish Twitter page and the Coffee Break Languages YouTube channel. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, evening you know, it's Coffee Break Spanish. Welcome back to Coffee Break Spanish. In this episode, we're continuing to look at adjectives. Last time we started looking at adjectives, at this time we're going to take a further look at them, in particular at certain adjectives which come before the noun. And when they come before the noun, it changes their meaning. So this will become clearer as we listen to the episode.

We'll also be talking about physical descriptions of people, talking about their hair, their eyes, and so on. Hopefully, you'll enjoy this lesson. So last week we looked at adjectives, adjectives ending in O, that gave feminine form ending in A. Masculine plural in O's. And feminine plural in ass. So let's take the word blanco as an example.

Let's talk about a white cat. Un gato blanco. Okay, so let's change the word and we'll talk about. but contento. How would you see the men are happy? Los Homes are contentos.

Very well, and you remember that that was stand. Los Homs are contentos. How would you see the women are happy? Las Mujeres

are contentas. Okay, very well, the Mugres are contentas. So that's O-A-os-as adjectives.

We also learned some adjectives that end in i or the sound e, important, for example. So how would you say an important book? An libro importante. An libro important. And how would you say an intelligent woman? An Mujer Intelligente. An Mugher Intelligente. Now, how would you say Mark and Kara are?

very intelligent. Mark and Kara are very intelligent. Okay, excellent. You got both the verb right. It's son from the verb ser because it's an inherent characteristic that we are both very

intelligent people, obviously. Son intelligentes. It's ending in is the plural form of intelligente. Very well. Now, what we noticed last week is that all the adjectives that we were learning,

came after the noun. Un gato negro, an ombre intelligente, and so on. This week we're going to look at a few adjectives that come before the nouns. And in some cases, these adjectives aren't really what you would consider

as traditional adjectives, like black and white and happy and intelligent and so on. Let's take one of them now. The word mucho. Mucho means... A lot. Yeah, it means. a lot or I suppose you could say much. So a lot of time or much time would be.

Mucho tempo. Yeah. Now that is an adjective really just like other adjectives and it comes before the noun. So mucho tempo and mucha comida for example. What would that mean? A lot of food. Yeah, mucha comida, a lot of food. Mucha comida. Mucha comida. Okay. How would you say lots of cats? Muchos gatos. Muchos gatos. How would you say lots of black cats? Muchos gatos negros. Very bien. Each one of those words has to have an S on the end. Muchos, the masculine plural form of mucho. Gatos, obviously the plural form of gato.

And negros, the plural form of black. Muchos gatos negros. Muchos gatos negros. And you probably know what's coming. How would you see many white doves? Muchas palomas blankas. Muchas palomas blankas. Perfecto.

Muchas palomas blankas. So, much, much, muchos, muchas. That comes before the noun. Another example would be the word for how much. Quanto. Quanto. Quanto, meaning how much or in some cases as much. If I say, for example,

quanto tempo sin verte. Quanto time sin berte. That literally means how much time without to see you. How much time without seeing you? Quanto time sin verte. It's kind of like the end. English long time no see. Quanto Tiempo

Sinverte. Quanto Tienpo sin verte. Okay and I've got to say quanto because Tiempo is masculine singular. Quanto Tiempo Sinvertte.

Quanto Tiempo. Quanto Tienpo. And if I were talking about how much food is there Quanta Comida. Quanta Comita. Quanta Comida.

How much food there is. Now when it comes into the Plutal, we could think of but in terms of how many, for example, how many cats are there? Quantos gatos aye. Quantos gatos aye. And that's using the adjective as a question word as well. Quantos gatos aye.

How many cats are there? And again, it's coming before the noun. We could say, for example, quantas palomas blancas there quantas palomas blancas aye

okay again quantas is coming before the noun now we're not going to go through all of this again but just one thing to point out is that another example another category of adjectives

that come before the nouns are the possessive adjectives so for example you say my padre my father so you don't say Padre me or anything like that. So the possessive adjectives also come before the noun.

Take the example of Nuestro. Nostro changes to Nuestra for feminine. Nostro Padre, Nuestra Madae, Nuestros Ijos, Nuestra yas, and so on. Okay, we'll be back in just a moment. When you're not listening to Gopherbrick Spanish, you can still practice your Spanish with their regular posts on social media. Find us on Facebook. Just search for coffee break Spanish. We're Learn Spanish on Twitter.

And you can keep up with the team through our regular posts on Instagram. Follow coffee break languages. It's our mission to help you turn your downtime into your due time. Okay, let's get on with the lesson. Let's get back to our descriptions. Last time we learned a few words to describe people. We learned, for example, alto. Tall? Yep. What about

Bajo? Small. And gordo? Fat? Delgado? Fin. Okay, we're going to add a few other words to this today. We're going to add the word guapo.

Gwapo. Guapo means handsome, good-looking. Guapo. Guapo. And guapa? Gwapa. The feminine form of that. So, guapa meaning pretty.

Gwafa. You'll quite often hear people saying, Ola guapa. Ola guapa. Literally, meaning, hey, good looking, or high, gorgeous or something like that. But it's not really used in a romantic sense or anything like that.

It's just a term of endearment between friends very often. And obviously, two words, a female person. Ola guapa. Ola guapa. You tend not to say, Ola guapo.

Doesn't really sound right. Ola guapo. Nah, probably not. Maybe some people would, but I wouldn't. Anyway, let's move on. And just while we're talking about guapo or guapa, we may have come across this before. When you describe someone as good-looking,

you would say es guapo. For example, apparently Brad Pitt es guapo. That's what Kara told me to say anyway. Brad Pitt es guapo. So that's us using guapo with the verb ser, meaning it's a sort of inherent characteristic that Brad Pitt is good looking. Brad Pitt is guapo. However, you can also use guapo-guapa with the verb estar, and it takes on a slightly different meaning.

If, for example, you're going out and your wife comes down the stairs all ready to go out looking beautiful, you could say, que guapa estas. literally how pretty you look at this moment it doesn't necessarily mean you're not pretty all the time but it is referring particularly to the way you look at a particular moment when you're using estar in that sense ke guapa estas now the opposite of guapo guapa is feo feo that's spelled f i o Feo. And the feminine version, fair.

Fair. And we'll not spend too much time talking about being ugly. So let's move on. We learned to talk about people being rovio or moreno. Can you remember what they meant? What does rubio mean? Blonde, fair-haired, like featured. Yeah, sort of having fair hair, fair features and so on.

And moreno meaning dark hair, dark features. We can be more specific, however, if we're talking about hair. In Spanish, to say that someone has black hair, for example, you say he has the hair black. Now, the word for hair in Spanish is el pelo. El pelo. El pelo. El pelo.

So how would you see the hair black? black. El pello negro. El pelo negro. So he has the hair black. Tieni el pello negr perfect. And that's exactly how you say he has black hair.

Tienie el pelo negro. Tienie el pelo negro. Now if it's she has black hair, what would it be? Would it be? Tienie el el pelo Yeah, it's just the same as a trick question for you. Tienie el pelo negro.

Tienie el el pello negro. Try to say he has white hair. Tiene el pale blanco. Tiene el pelo blanco.

He has white hair. Now the word for brown in Spanish, well, one of the words for brown in Spanish to talk about hair is castaño. Castanio.

Castaio. Castaio. Castaio is linked to the word for chestnut, so it's kind of chestnut colored hair. Tienie el pelo castaño. Tienael el pelo castano. But to be honest, if you're describing someone having brown hair or dark hair, then it's probably more likely that you're, you would just say,

is moreno. Is morano. And notice that, because you're saying he is dark hair, dark featured, and so on. You're not saying,

Tiene el Pelo Morino. You could get away with that. People would understand what you mean. But you're better to use it with CER. Is moreno,

or, Tienie el Pelo Negro, or Tiener Pello castaño, or whatever. Tienel Pello castaño. Tiena del Pelo Castaño.

Now, we're going to use the same format to talk about eyes. In this case, we're talking about he has the eyes. Let's stick with brown. We'll use castaño here. So how would you say he has the eyes brown? Tieni los ojas, castaños. Very bien. You remembered castaños has to be in the brown.

plural because we're talking about Los Ojos and that was way back when we were doing parts of the body Los Ojos Castaños Los Ojos Castaños Okay now again there's a slight variation in how people describe brown eyes in different parts of the world you called also here

Tienie los Ojos Marrones Tienie los Ojos Marrones Tienie los Ojos Marron That's a double R in there, so make sure you roll it. Tienie los Ojos Marrones. Tienes los Ojos Marones. Very well. Now, I'm probably overrolling my R just a little so that people can pick this up.

Tienes los Ojos Marrones. Perfecto. Now, if it weren't brown eyes, it might be green eyes. Do you know what the word for green is in Spanish? Bered? Berde. Berde. Now, Berde is the singular.

So what's the plural? Berdes? Berdes. How would you say then? He has green eyes. Tienie los ojas Berdes. Tienes

Berenes Bres. Tienes los ojas Berdes. Very well. And to say she has green eyes, what you

would you say? It would just be the same. Tiening los ojas berdes. Tienes los ojos reddes. One word that we haven't covered so far is the word for blue, and that is

Azul. Azul. Or in Latin America, Azul. Azul. So, Tienes los ojos Azoules.

Tienes los ojas Azoules. Meaning he has blue eyes, or she has blue eyes. and again in Latin America that would be Tienie los Ojos Azules

Tienes los Ojas Azules Now another colour of hair that we've not mentioned so far and perhaps we should given that we're in Scotland that's red hair The word for red in Spanish

is rojo Rojo Yeah but if you said Tienie el el Pelo rojo it really would mean that somebody has bright red hair Like a clobo

a clown. Yeah, exactly, just like a clown, but we don't want to say that. We want to talk about sort of Scottish red hair. And in that situation, you use es, again, es moreno, es rovio, in this case, es peli rojo. Es peli rojo. Es peli rojo. Very well. Hopefully, that's given you some further phrases to describe people, and we're going to be putting these into practice next week. And that's where we're going to leave it today

for this edition of Coffee Break Spanish. Thanks for joining us, and we hope it's been useful. You can join the Coffee Break Spanish community on Facebook at Facebook.com slash Coffee Break Spanish and follow at Learn Spanish on Twitter. Much a gratis and hasta pronto. This is the production of the Radiolingua Network. Find out more at Radiolingua.com.

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