April 22nd, 2007 CoffeeBreakSpanish.com In this edition: the campsite and the alphabet! Lesson 24 Notes ¿Se puede acampar aquí? Lesson 24 Programme Notes Welcome to Coffee Break Spanish, the podcast aimed at independent learners of Spanish. In Coffee Break Spanish we’ll be guiding you through the basics of the Spanish language and helping you to learn to communicate in Spain and Spanish-speaking countries. In this final lesson on accommodation you’ll learn some useful phrases for the campsite. You’ll also learn to spell using the Spanish alphabet. El camping In your studies of Spanish you’ll often come across words which look as if they could be English words, but aren’t quite right. The word for “campsite” is one of these words: el camping. You could ask the question: If the answer to ¿hay un camping por aquí? is negative, then you may find yourself having to ask: ¿se puede acampar aquí? can one camp here? Note the use of the phrase ¿se puede...? This is a very useful construction in Spanish. It’s an impersonal way of asking if it’s possible to do something, and is always followed by the infinitive: ¿se puede bailar? can one dance? / is it possible to dance? This was covered in detail in lesson 16. ¿hay un camping por aquí? is there a campsite around here? Before we get into constructing phrases for the campsite you’ll need to know some basic vocabulary for the campsite: We can use the same construction in other phrases in the campsite: ¿se puede beber el agua? can one drink the water? acampar to camp, to go camping ¿se puede alquilar una toalla? can one hire a towel? una tienda / una carpa (LAm) a tent ¿Dónde está...? una caravana a caravan Another useful phrase you already know which will serve you well in the campsite is the phrase ¿dónde está?: ¿dónde está la piscina? where is the swimming pool? 1 ¿dónde está el supermercado? where is the supermarket? ¿dónde se puede comprar café? where can one (“you”) buy coffee? In the situation where you are asking where more than one thing is, you need to change the verb to the plural form: Without going into the complicated grammatical details of this construction, you should note that if whatever you’re buying is a plural thing, eg. “eggs”, you need to make the puede into a plural verb: where is ¿dónde está...? where are...? ¿dónde están...? Within the context of the campsite, you can use the plural form in these examples: ¿dónde están las duchas? where are the showers? ¿dónde están los servicios? where are the toilets? ¿dónde están los cubos de la basura? where are the bins? ¿dónde se pueden comprar huevos? where can one (“you”) buy eggs? The reason for this is that the subject of the sentence is the milk / coffee / bread / eggs, etc. and therefore the verb must agree with the subject. If you remember back to me llamo, and se llama, you should remember that se llama literally means “he/she calls himself ”. This is actually the same construction as se puede comprar... Our last two examples literally mean “where can coffee buy itself ?” and “where can eggs buy themselves?” Look carefully at the following examples. Earlier we learned to ask this question: ¿se puede alquilar una toalla? can one (“you”) hire a towel? If we wanted to ask “can one hire towels”, using the plural noun, we would have to make the verb plural too: Where can one buy...? This lesson is all about reusing existing knowledge. We can now construct phrases like, “Where can one buy milk”. The word for “to buy” is comprar, so this gives the full phrase: ¿dónde se puede comprar leche? where can one buy milk? In English we’re probably more like to say “where can you buy coffee?” In this case, the “you” doesn’t really refer to “you”: instead, it’s an impersonal “you” that refers to someone else. The most correct way to translate this into Spanish is buy using the impersonal se form as we’ve learned in se puede...: ¿dónde se puede comprar pan? where can one (“you”) buy bread? Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 24 ¿se pueden alquilar toallas? can one (“you”) hire towels? Literally this means “can towels hire themselves out?” As with our earlier examples, this does sound strange. It you find it confuses you further, try to learn the phrases as items of vocabulary, rather than concentrating too much on the grammar. The alphabet According to the Real Academia Española, the institution which “regulates” the use of Spanish across the world, the following letters make up the Spanish alphabet. The pronunciation of each letter in Spanish is given beside it. page 2 a a t te b be u u c ce (“thay” in Spain; “say” in LAm) v uve / ve ch che w uve doble / u doble / doble u / doble ve d d x equis e e y i griega f efe z zeta (“thayta” in Spain; “sayta” in LAm) g ge h hache i i j jota Note that there are three additional letters in the Spanish alphabet: ch, ll and ñ. Also note the letters b and v. In most Spanishspeaking countries the names for these letters sound identical. To differentiate between them you will sometimes hear: be k ka b be grande l ele ve ll m elle v uve eme ve chica Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 24 n ene ñ eñe o o p pe q cu r ere s ese We’ve already covered how to ask “how do you spell ....?” in lesson 22 bonus vocabulary. Let’s revise that now: ¿cómo se escribe...? how do you spell Note that this is the same construction as ¿dónde se puede comprar... In fact it literally means something like “how does ... spell itself ?” page 3 CoffeeBreakSpanish: Lesson 24 - Basic Vocabulary un camping campsite ¿hay un camping por aquí? is there a campsite around here? acampar to camp una tienda tent una carpa tent (LAm) una caravana caravan ¿se puede acampar aquí? can one camp here? ¿se puede beber el agua? can one drink the water? ¿se puede alquilar una toalla? can one hire a towel? ¿dónde está...? where is...? la piscina swimming pool el supermercado supermarket las duchas showers / shower block los servicios toilets / toilet block los cubos de la basura bins / waste disposal area ¿dónde se puede comprar...? where can one buy...? leche milk café coffee pan bread ¿cómo se escribe...? how do you spell...? CoffeeBreakSpanish: Lesson 24 - Bonus Vocabulary ¿cómo se deletrea...? how do you spell ...? . (full stop / period) punto - (hyphen) guión _ (underscore) guión bajo / subraya : (colon) dos puntos / (slash) barra mi dirección de correo electrónico es my email is... mi email es... my email is... [email protected] j-u-a-n (guión) c-a-r-l-o-s (punto) l-o-r-ca (arroba) m-a-i-l (punto) com Please note that any email addresses given in the printed or recorded version of this lesson are intended as examples only and are not intended to reflect any real people or email addresses. Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 24 page 4