Coffee Break Spanish - CBS 2.16 | Spelling changes in the preterite tense

Episode Date: July 12, 2010

More preterite tenses this week: it’s now time to look at reflexive verbs and verbs which have spelling changes ('radical-changing verbs') in the preterite tense. Please note that lesson 16 of Season 2 was originally known as lesson 216 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 and bienninoes to Coffee Break Spanish. How we are today? Welcome back to Coffee Break Spanish. This lesson, number 56, continues to look at the Preterate Tense. However, we're going to be looking at certain verbs which have interesting spelling issues, shall we say, in the preterate tense. Verbs like Toca and Jogar. Because of the endings of the Preteric Tense, we have to insert some extra letters into the conjugation of these verbs. It will all become clear in this lesson.

Hope you enjoy it. Now, before we get into the new content for today's lesson, let's review some of what we covered last week. Kara, can you remember how to conjugate the verbs that we learned last week in the preterate tense? Maybe. Okay, let's begin with ear. The verb, ear means...

Ticul. And ear in the present starts with... Boy. Boy. Okay, so boy, bas-ba, we know that, everyone knows that. But let's think about... ear in the preterate. It changes somewhat, doesn't it? How would you say I went? Fui.

Very bien. Fui. So if I went as Fui, how would you say, for example, we went? Fumos. Very bien. Fuemos. Now the other verbs that we looked at last week were affair, mer and dar. What does ather mean? To do. To do. And there's another meaning of Ather sometimes means... To make? Yeah. Ather, to do or to make.

And remember, obviously, if you're in Latin America, you wouldn't say ather, but a ser. Now, what about ver? To see. To see, that's right. So, bear, to see, and we also looked at dar. Da'ar means... To give. To give.

We've also come across dar in a couple of idiomatic senses. Can you remember how to say, for example, to throw a... party? Dar a fiesta. Dar one fiesta. So, putting this into the preterate, how would you say,

I gave, or I threw a party? Di, una fiesta. Very well. You remember that dar becomes di in the preterate tense. Let's go through the whole of

dar. We started with I gave. Dee. You gave? Diste? He, she or it gave? Dio.

And that's also used for the Ustead form as well. Usteedio. We gave. Dimas. You gave, that's the plural form in Spain. Disteis. Diste. Very well.

And they gave. Dieron. Dieron. Very well. Now, they gave, the Dieron form is also used for Usteades. the plural polite form or the plural form used throughout Latin America, dieron. So that was di di dieste dior, d'est dior. Let's look at ather and we'll use the Spanish pronunciation to begin with.

So ather in the preterate tense becomes i did ive ice very well and then if ith is i did how would you say you did? Ithiste. Ithiste. Perfecto. Ithiste. And then this one was tricky.

It was he did. Itho. That's right. So he did, she did, it did. And indeed, Ustead did. You did, the polite form. I-Z-O. And then the we-did form.

Isimos. Isimos. That's right. What's your stress? It's e-themos. E-themos. Y-themos. And you.

And you all plural, informal Spain form? Ithais. Now, you're sure about that? What's the form for the U informal singular? Isiste. Yeah, so if it's Ithe in the Tu form, what's the Bossotros form? Yistis. Ethistais.

Yeah, okay, ethistice. And then finally, they did, or they made. I didon. And of course using Latin American pronunciation, that would be, Ise, didiste, Iso, weissimos, existes, and sieron. Ise, isiste, Iso, isisisestis,

isieran. Perfect. Now, you may be wondering, what about all these other verbs that we've covered in the present tense, which are irregular, I'm thinking about verbs like, estar, ser and perhaps tenet. What about these in the preterate tense?

Well, in actual fact, we're going to leave these just now because it's quite tricky to explain where and when these verbs are used in the preterate. If you think about the preterate as this narrative tense, I did something, I arrived, I reached the port, I jumped on board the ship, I set sail and so on.

It's slightly different when you say, I was or I had, because that's not so much narrative, it's more describing. And when you're describing things in the past, you do use another tense, which will come to in a couple of weeks' time. So we're going to leave these verbs for the time being, and look instead at a few other verbs. And the first group of verbs that we're going to look at are radical changing verbs. Now, can you remember an example of a radical changing verb, Kara? How about Penza?

Penzar, perfecto. Now, pensar, what is the radical change involved in pensar? The e changes to an IE. Yeah, in the present tense, the I.E. So you have Pienzo, Pianzas, Pianza, but pencamos, pencise, piensan. Now, if we think about the preterate tense, now we're going back to a regular preterate tense endings,

pensar is an A-R verb. So what's the I-e form of pensar? Pense. Ben-se. And where, tell me, is the stress on that word? On the last syllable? Exactly, it's on the last syllable. So compare Pienceo and Pense.

The stress on the present tense is on the I-E, and the stress when it's in the preterate is on the last syllable. Exactly. So when the stress is not on that first syllable of the verb, in the case of the infinitive, pensar, and the stress is not on that syllable, you don't need the radical change. Think of pienzo, but pensamos.

You don't say piencamos. You don't need to say pincamos because the stress is not on that first syllable. but pienso, piensas, pienza the stress is on the first syllable. However, in the preterate,

the first syllable is never stressed. Before we go through the whole of pensar, let's remind ourselves of the regular endings of the preterate tense of an AR verb. Kara, can you remember what they are? Just the endings.

Mm-hmm. A, astae, or amos astis Aron Yeah just watch Amos Aestis

Aron Amos Aestis Aron That's it Yeah So taking

Pinsar Let's think through the verb You would have I thought Pince Yeah You thought

Pinseste He Sheeret thought Pinsou Uh huh We thought Pensamos You thought

Pinsestes. They thought. Pinsaron. Okay. So first of all, let's consider, as a really good example, the he, she or it thought. That's a narrative tense in the past using the preterate. Penso.

Penso. And compare that with the I think in the present tense form. Pienceo. Okay, so in the present tense we've got Pienceo, displaying the radical. change and in the preterate we've got penso, not displaying the radical change because the stress syllable

isn't the syllable that's going to change. Penso. Penzo? As opposed to pienso. Pienzo. So the bottom line here is that in fact when you're talking about a regular verb in the preterate tense

you won't notice the radical change at all because most of the time, certainly all of the time with regular verbs, the stress is not on the syllable that would otherwise have the radical change in it. Okay, while we're talking about other types of verbs, let's just mention reflexive verbs. And reflexive verbs are very straightforward in the preterate tense because, once again, you just use the reflexive pronoun and combine it with the conjugated verb in the preterate tense. Let's take, levantarse. To get up.

To get up, that's right. Levantarse to get up. So let's take Levantarse in the preterate tense. We need the reflexive pronoun, plus the conjugated verb. And of course, we've just gone through the AR endings. E, Aste O, amos, Aste is Aaron. So let's conjugate this. I got up would be

Me levanté. Very well. Me levante. So you got up would be... Te levantaste. Te levantaste. And he, she or it got up? Se levo. Now, I think you're maybe getting mixed up with French there.

Se levanto. Se levanto. Se levanto. Se levanto. Se levanto. Se levanto. Okay. Remember because it's levanto.

in the present tense, me levanto, but se levanto. So levanto. Uh-huh. Nos we wantamos.

Nos levantamos. And that's the same as the present tense. Okay. It's the same as the present tense. Nos levantedestis. O'levantest? Se levanted. Se levanted.

So levanted. So levanted. Well, Kara, at what hour you levantaste today? Me levanted at last 8. You levantaste

to last 8? Yes. What suerte. I'm me levanted at 6. Oh. Watch that there.

Did you hear how I gave my own time that I got up there? I said, I'm me levanted at 6. I was putting in the

yo there. I didn't need to put in the yo. But I put it in for extra stress. Kara Se levanto at 8,

and I me levanted at a 6. And the yo is in there for stress. Okay, let's take this a little further

and let's look at another verb, another reflexive verb in the preterate. Let's look at ducharsse. Ducharse means to shower.

Yeah, to shower, to have a shower. So ducharsse becomes in a conjugated form, me duched I diduchest

you duchaste you diduched she duched we didchum we we stuched

us duchestest they duched they duched so so duched then

how you did you duch this morning this morning me me duch

at at Double check the stress there. How do you see I showed myself? Meduchet. Meduchet at 8.5. Meduchet at 8.5. At what hour saliste? Salis. Salis.

At 10.5. At the 10.5, okay? And at what hour? You got to the university? ...toe, at the university, at the 11.5. Very good. Okay, we'll be back in just a moment. Now, if you'd like to get more out of your coffee break Spanish experience,

then you can sign up for the full premium version of our course, and that includes video versions of our lessons, where you'll see the words and phrases on the screen of your device while you listen. There's also a set of lesson notes for every lesson, with vocabulary and additional examples. and bonus audio. All of our premium courses are available at the Coffee Break Academy.

That's at coffeebreakacademy.com. Okay, let's get on with the lesson. Okay, this Legaar is a fantastic example because we get to talk about geeky Spanish spelling things. Okay, now, Legaar in the present tense would be a standard regular verb. Yeah? Yeah.

Jigo, jegas, yeah, yegas, Let's think about the preterate. We've got the normal endings of the preterate. E. Aste O, amos, astais, Aron. Okay, so that's the normal A-R endings in the preterate tense. Let's think of, Yegar, and let's think of how you would say, I arrived. Liege.

L'eighet. Now, think of how you would spell that. L-L-L-E-G is the root of the verb, yeah? If you take the R of the infinitive. Yeah. And then you add an E acute. Yep. So you've got L-L-E-G-E-A-Cute, yeah? Mm-hmm. Now, what do you know about G followed by E in Spanish?

Think of the word, for example, the word for general. you'd have to make it a sound yeah so the word for general is general you would have to say leche however that sounds very strange nobody would ever say I arrived by saying leche that sounds really strange you have to say lege so to make the g into a hard g sound even though it's got to be followed by the e

you add in a u it's a silent u so it becomes lege lege lege so that's just one of those little spelling changes that happens

because of the use of the e in the preterate tense lege legas lego legamos degastes so there's only a u

in the first person exactly right okay I've just thought of another example of this how do you say to play in Spanish Hougar

So to say I played at football you would say Hogue Hougé al football And what would happen to the You would need a U-E

Exactly You would spell that J-U-G-U-E acute Chouge But the U is silent in there Well the second U The first U

Obviously has to be pronounced But the second U is silent Juge. Juge. Juge. Jue al football. Juge all football. Okay.

Now, there are these spelling changes that do come up from time to time. I'm thinking as well of verbs that end in car, C-A-R. For example, to-car, to-car-un-instrumento, to-care-el-piano,

to-l-gat-a-gir-gir- and in this case, the spelling change is from to talkar, with a C in the infinitive, to a Q-U in the preterate so it becomes

toque T-O-Q-U-E acute toque the other parts stay the same so try toque Toque

Toque to caust toca must tocaest to caron Toque toque to castes

to co tocaustis tocaren Okay that was just to see if you were still awake I know

all this grammar can get kind of complicated and maybe a little tedious but hopefully it's useful to everyone. Now we're going to be doing next week some little tests on all this preterate stuff because yeah, I'm afraid so. We're going to do some more of our personality quizzes and you're going to be guessing who the personality is. And for that we're going to need two verbs and that is nather nather

nathar or nasser in Latin American Spanish and that means to be born and morir

morir morir is the opposite of to be born to die to die yeah and if we're

talking about someone else we would say nathio nathio he was born or she was born and how would you say

I was born nathie nathie nathie uh huh nati or nassi Nassie. Nassie in

1972 When was I born, Cara? Yeah, I'm glad you got that bit, right? What was it the second part? 1972. 19702. So, nathie, and then to talk about someone else, Nacio.

To talk about someone else dying, you would say murio. Murio. And although it's not likely ever to be used, you might be interested to know that to say I died, you would say Mori. Mori. Okay, so it's not muri, but mori.

Mori. Okay, Rok. We're going to get back to that next time with more personality quizzes, and you'll need to recognize Nathio and Moriott for the personality quizzes. But in the meantime, we're going to cover one more thing before finishing off today, and that is Indivis. object pronouns. Last week I mentioned to say to give something to him or to her we use the word le. Le. Le. So for example, le di a regalo. I gave her or him a present. I gave her or him a present.

And in Spanish you have to say I gave to her or to him a present because the lea means to her or to him. Now, we've come across this before and I think what people didn't realize last week was that it's exactly the same as me gusta. Okay, because me means to me gusta is pleasing me gusta la music.

To me is pleasing the music. I like music. Me gusta la music. Me gosta la music. Kara, how do you say, do you like music? Te gusta la music? Te gusta la music?

Exactly. So the verb doesn't change in this situation because we're saying to you is pleasing the music. Te gusta la music. Equally, I can say Te di a regalo. I gave to you a present.

Te di a regalo. Te di a regalo. Me didste a regalo. Me didste a regalo. To me, you gave a present. And so coming to to him or to her, which we've already looked at, Le di a regalo, I gave to him or to her a present. And equally, when we're saying he or she likes,

to him or to her is pleasing. Le gusta. Le gusta. Okay, so it's this le that's to him or to her. If we want to say to us, we use the word noos. So that's to us is pleasing. Nos gusts or in the

dar example you gave us a present. Nos did a regalo. Nos did a regalo. Nos did you a regalo. No stiste a

regal. The Uplutal, in Spain form would be us. Us. So we gave you a present. To you, we gave a present. Os

dimos a regalo. Ose dimos a regalo. And comparing that with the to gustar to you is pleasing music.

O's Gusta la music Ose Gusta la music Okay, so we've got Noss, O's and then To Them is Les

So to them is pleasing music Les Gusta la music And to them We gave a present Les Dimos A regalo Les Dimos a regalo

So all of your indirect object pronouns are me te lei nos os les me te lees me te lei nos us less very well be coming across more pronouns as we work our way through these lessons and don't worry too much about these it's the most important thing is that you recognize them when you hear them and work out what they mean from the context around them 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 a production of the Radiolingua Network. Find out more at Radiolingua.com.