Coffee Break Spanish - CBS 2.26 | More on the perfect tense

Episode Date: November 8, 2010

One of the best ways to make progress in a language is to use the language with native speakers and to check your understanding by asking them for feedback. In lesson 26 you’ll put what you’ve been learning recently into practice by asking ¿Lo he dicho bien? and other phrases using the perfect tense. Please note that lesson 26 of Season 2 was originally known as lesson 226 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.

Good morning to all. Welcome back to Coffee Break Spanish. Now, in this lesson, we are still looking at the perfect tense. We'll round up everything on the perfect tense in this lesson, and by the end of it, you should be absolutely comfortable with when to use the perfect tense and how to form it, indeed also how to form the irregular past participles of some verbs. I hope you find the lesson useful.

So let's go back to that lo he dido bien. Literally, that means lo, that, have I said or I have said well. So have I said that well. Lo he didio bien. Lo he didio bien. Okay, so Dicho comes from which verb? Decier?

Decer. To say. So Dichu is an irregular past participle of D'Ethier. Lo he didicho bien. How would I say to you, Kara, you've said that correctly. Lo has Dicho bien? Exactly.

Lo has ditto bien. And if I wanted to say he has said it correctly, lo a didicho bien? Lo has said it exactly. The lo, each time, stays the same because it's referring to an impersonal thing. Lo a didicho bien, he or she has said it correctly.

Now, let's change this slightly. If you're checking whether you've said something correctly, you might want to use the verb pronunciar. Pronunciar. Watch that is, pronunciar. Prounciar. Okay, and in Latin American Spanish, obviously, that would be pronunciar. Pronunciar.

Now, what would that mean? To pronounce. Exactly. Pronunciar, or pronunciar, means to pronounce. And it's a regular verb, and therefore the past participle would be... Pronunciado? Pronunciado. That's right.

pronunciado. Pronunciado. So, if we say, I said it correctly or did I say it correctly, is lo he Dicho bien, what would be, did I pronounce it correctly? Lo e pronunciado bien? That's it. So let's just practice this. How would you say, did I say it correctly?

Lo he did you say it correctly? Uh-huh. and did I pronounce it correctly? Lo I pronunciated bien. Lo I pronunciado bien. Very well. Okay, now, one other thing here that I could suggest is that if you were writing something,

then you might want to ask, did I write that correctly, or did I spell it correctly, I suppose? So in that situation, which verb would I use? Escribier. Escribier, of course, meaning to write. Now, we learned last week that

Escribier doesn't become Escribido in the passport decibel. What does it become? Eskrito. Eskrito. That's right. Eskrito. So if Eskrito is the passport

syllable, how do you say, I have written? E-eskrito. Okay, so it's E-eskrito, has-eskrito, a-eskrito, Emoses-estrito, have-estrito, an-estrito.

Kara, run through that for me. E-es-scrito, has-es-scrito, a-es-crito, have-is-scrito, and-scrito. Just what is that. We've-es-scrito, just the stress there. That's it. Okay, so if we're using this word, this eskrito from escribier, how would you say, did I write that correctly?

Lo e-escrito bien. Yeah, very well. Now, just one thing here. I said, how would you say, did I write that correct? and of course until now I've been saying have I written that correctly or have I said it correctly and so on and notice that it's exactly the same verb in Spanish, it's the same tense in Spanish, even though we change that form in English. I wrote it correctly or did I write it correctly or have I written it correctly? It's all the perfect tense in Spanish in this situation.

So lo he dido bien. Lo he pronounced well bien. Or lo have pronounced well or lo have pronounced well or lo he's written

well very very well okay let's just clear up exactly when we use the perfect tense so far we've come across

these situations first of all the most obvious one and the one that's absolutely no doubt whatsoever is the have done okay so I have done

my homework I have done my deveres. I have visited Spain. Kara, what would that be? I visited Spain. I visited Spain. Very well. I have written a letter.

I've written a letter. A card. Perfect. So I have done something. You have done something. We have done something. He has done something. And so on.

That's an absolute definite, perfect tense. Secondly, when you're talking about the recent past, okay? Now, this is a little more difficult because how do you define recent past? Well, first of all, if you're talking about something that's happened today, it's very likely that you'll use the perfect tense. For example, we've already come across esta manana. This morning. And what does that mean, Cara?

This morning. This morning. So esta manana, he has written a cart. This morning I wrote a letter Now why is it E Eskrito? Why is it not Escribi in the preterate? Because it's this morning so it's related

to the present. Yeah, it's kind of the present it's the present perfect thing that we've spoken about before. It's related to the present it's happened today, it's very recent past. So although in English we would say, I wrote a letter, or indeed I have written a letter

and these can mean slightly different things in English in Spanish, if you did it today, then you use the perfect tense. Eescrito a carda. Okay. Let's take another example. Let's take this week. This week, I learned a lot. No, I learned a lot.

We have learned a lot. We have learned a lot. Yeah. So this week, we've learned a lot. Now, that's not. really quite as obviously related to the present. It's not quite as obviously recent past. However, the key thing there is this semana. We've said this semana, so therefore it must be the perfect tense. After this

semana, the normal tense to use is the perfect tense. This semana we've learned much. This semana we've learned much. Okay. Okay, we'll be back in just a moment. When you're not listening to Coffee Break Spanish, you can still practice your Spanish with our 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. Now, there is this other slightly less clear situation and that's when you don't actually specify what time it is that you're referring to. Let's imagine the situation that you come out of the cinema and you say to the person that you were at the cinema with, did you like the film?

Okay? Did you like the film in English? Doesn't necessarily suggest a particular tense in Spanish because it could be in a variety of contexts. But given that we're talking about the fact that we've just come out the cinema, it's as recent as you can get. Therefore, which tense do you think we should use in Spanish? The perfect? The perfect, exactly.

So let's think about how we would say, did you like the film in Spanish? How would we say, first of all, do you like the film? Te gusta? Te gusta. And the film is La Pelicula. A pellicula. Te gustola la pellicula. Okay, so te gustosta.

the present tense of Gostar. Now, remember that Gostar is one of those slightly strange verbs because it kind of swaps round a bit. You don't say, do you like the film in Spanish? You actually say, does the film please you? Okay, tegusta to you pleases la pellicula, the film. Te Gusta la pellicula. Te gusta la pellicula.

Now we're going to put this into the perfect tense. so te gustin is present to make that into the perfect then we need to get the past participle of gustar which would be gustado because gustado comes from gustar and it's a regular verb and therefore in the past participle it becomes

gustado so gustado is the past participle that we need let's try and work out how we'd say the whole thing and remember we're not saying have you you liked the film, but has the film pleased you? So which part of Aver will we be using? The third person? Exactly, which is a.

Ah, very well. So to you, T has pleased. A gustado. The film. The film. The movie. Very good.

Te has got got the película. Te has got a political. Te gustav la a political. Tea... Te ha... Te... Yeah, and I did something there that's very, very common

in Spain in particular and that is changed the a... Azo... to a kind of... Aal. Al, that's right. It's kind of like...

It almost becomes, in some parts of Spain, ta got... La pellicula. Tea guistao la filikula. It's not probably the best thing for a learner to do because it might give the impression

that you know more than you know and then you'll get a lot of Spanish back. But... If you try to just understand that, that the Gustao is the same as Gustado. Okay? And the D sound in there is the way it's written. And often it's pronounced as Gustao. Gusto.

So, Te ha gustado la pellicula. Te ha gustado la pellicula. And why is it perfect? Because it's just happened. You're just out of the film and you are asking your friend or whoever you went to the cinema with. Did you enjoy it? Tea gustado la pellicula. How would you say, did you enjoy the book?

Tea guzada the book? Tea guzada de lebr, perfecto. Okay, let's change this a little. And ask the question, did you like the film that you perhaps saw last month? In that situation, it's not going to be the perfect tense that you're looking for. What would it be? It would be the preterate.

Exactly. So now we're thinking of the preterate tense of goals. Again, as a regular AR verb. So we're looking for the third person singular, which would be... Gusto. Gusto, exactly. So, to you pleased the film?

Te gusto la pellicola. Te gusto la pellicula. Yeah, did you like the film? Now, there probably are many people listening who will think, hmm, that could be perfect as well. And the fact is it probably could be. However, really from a grammatical point of view, because the perfect tense is used for recent things, it's a bit of a grey area as to whether that would be perfect or preterate.

And the bottom line is, of course, that either way you will be understood. Let's think of another example of this whole idea of the perfect of recency, this recent perfect tense. Let's imagine someone just said something to you. And I wanted to know, what did he say to you? Okay. Now that person has just said whatever he's just said, yeah? So it's a recent event. I would then ask you, que to you, has he said, a dicho. What te a dicho? And the difference between that and ke te dico is of course that, that

is the preterate tense, therefore, in a sense, therefore, in a sense it's used for further back in the past. So, you know, what did he say to you in 1993? What did he say to you in 1993? Whereas, what did he say to you today? What has he said to you? So the important point here is that we're just thinking a little bit about how to use the perfect tense in the sense that we're looking at today or recent past. Okay?

Is that all clear? Yep. Okay. Remember then that esta manana, this t'arthe and also this week

this month this month this year even because you're using este or this situation

these are taking perfect too and the other situation that we mentioned last week was the idea of

a a year what does a a week ago a week ago yes so

a week ago we've we've we started to study Spanish. We started to learn Spanish. Now notice in English you say we started to learn Spanish whereas in Spanish you kind of have to say we have started to learn Spanish.

And I think one thing that's quite useful is that if you listen to native Spanish speakers speaking English, you might find that they often use phrases like this that's just in a little strange in English. For example, last week we have started learning Spanish and that sounds just a little strange to us, but at the same time, we understand what it means.

We're going to cover one more thing in this lesson, and that is the use of yeah. You remember last week, we mentioned yeah, as in already. Yeah, and etch omis de verres, I've already done my homework, and yeah, plus the perfect, is used in that way, very common. So how would you say, for example,

I have already visited Madrid? Yeah I visitado Madrid Yeah I visitado Madrid Okay now we're going to change this slightly

because what I want to do is look at the use of yeah when we're asking a question Let's take that example Yeah I have already visited Madrid

But if I put that into a question And ask you Cara Yeah has visited Madrid There are in a sense Two possible translations of that I could say

Have you all already visited Madrid in English, but I also could say, have you visited Madrid yet? As in you're doing a tour of Spain and you're ticking off the towns that you visit, and have you visited Madrid yet? Yeah, has visited Madrid? So the yeah, in the perfect tense, when it's a question, can have the meaning of yet, and not just already. Okay, we're going to put your perfect tense to the test in this week's bonus podcast, but for the time being, we'll leave it there. 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.

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