Lesson 28 - Guide

May 21st, 2007
CoffeeBreakSpanish.com
In this edition:
parts of the
body, aches and
pains
Lesson 28
Notes
¡No me siento bien!
Lesson 28
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.
This lesson covers parts of the body and aches
and pains in preparation for a visit to the
pharmacy.
As usual, with most adjectives, there are different
versions for masculine and feminine forms:
enfermo for masculine and enferma for feminine.
Note also that you use estoy, as opposed to soy to
say “I am...”. This is because it’s a temporary
state: you’re saying that you are temporarily
feeling well.
You can combine these phrases to come up with
a sentence like:
no me siento bien - estoy enfermo/a
I don’t feel well - I’m ill
I’m not well
The first phrase we need to learn in today’s
lesson is:
no estoy bien
I’m not well
We’ve already come across the phrase estoy bien,
meaning “I’m well”. This results in the negative
version, no estoy bien, meaning simply “I’m not
well”.
You can also use the phrase:
no me siento bien
I’m not feeling well
If you use this kind of phrase in a pharmacy or
when speaking to a doctor, it’s quite likely that
you’ll hear in reply:
¿dónde le duele?
where does it hurt (you)? (formal)
In this phrase the le means “to you” in the formal
sense, so the phrase literally means “where to you
is it hurting?” If the doctor or pharmacist was
speaking to a child, he or she would use:
¿dónde te duele?
where does it hurt (you)? (informal)
The phrase me siento comes from the verb sentirse,
meaning “to feel”. It’s a reflexive verb, so it works
along the same lines as llamarse, “to call
yourself ”. To say, therefore, “I am feeling well”,
you’d say me siento bien.
If you want to give more information you can
say that you’re ill:
You can probably guess that to change this to “it
hurts me”, you would change the le or te to me:
me duele...
(to me) it hurts...
The most simple way to use this phrase is to say:
estoy enfermo/a
I’m ill
me duele aquí
I’m sore here / it hurts here
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The phrase me duele is used very commonly with
parts of the body to convey pain in a particular
area.
We’ll now cover some parts of the body, all
words which can be used with the above phrase.
El cuerpo
Until now we’ve been looking at singular nouns:
la cabeza, el estómago, la garganta, la pierna, etc.
However when you’re talking about something a
‘plural’ part of your body you have to change the
verb duele to a plural form:
me duelen las piernas
my legs hurt / my legs are sore
Have a look at the list of vocabulary below:
la cabeza
head
el estómago
stomach
la garganta
throat
la pierna
leg
el brazo
arm
You can combine any of these items of
vocabulary with the phrase me duele... Look at the
following examples:
me duele la cabeza
my head hurts / I have a sore head
Depending on where you are in the Englishspeaking world there are various ways to say “I
have a headache”. The same applies in Spanish.
However, we’re going to concentrate on one way
for the time being, using the phrase me duele...
Note that me duele la cabeza literally means “to me
hurts the head”. The same goes for the following
phrases:
me duele la garganta
my throat hurts / I have a sore throat
me duele el brazo
my arm hurts / I have a sore arm
Many learners of Spanish wonder why it’s not
possible to say me duele mi brazo or me duele mi
cabeza, using the word for “my”, as opposed to
“the”. This is just one of these things that you
have to accept. The theory behind it could be
linked to the fact that if you were to say me duele
la cabeza it’s fairly obvious that it’s your own head
that is hurting you as opposed to anyone else’s!
Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 28
As you can see from the table below, the word
duele is used for singular parts of the body, and
duelen is used for plural parts. It’s also worth
pointing out that the same happens in English:
the verb changes from “hurts” to “hurt” in the
plural!
me duele
to me hurts... (sing)
me duelen
to me hurt... (plural)
Let’s now look at some additional words for
other parts of the body.
el ojo
eye
los ojos
eyes
la oreja
ear
las orejas
ears
la nariz
nose
la boca
mouth
el pie
foot
los pies
feet
el hombro
shoulder
los hombros
shoulders
With any of the above words the plural form
uses duelen and the singular duele if you’re talking
about things being sore:
page 2
me duele la oreja
my ear hurts / I have a sore ear
Cabeza, hombros, piernas, pies, piernas, pies
Ojos, orejas, boca y nariz
Cabeza, homrbos, piernas pies, piernas, pies.
me duelen las orejas
my ears hurt / I have sore ears
Una canción
This week’s episode finished with a song.
Cabeza, hombros, piernas, pies, piernas, pies.
Since the majority of this week’s vocabulary has
already been listed in the tables in this week’s
lesson, there’s no “basic” vocabulary list this
week. See below for some additional parts of the
body and more useful vocabulary for describing
your aches and pains. Note that next week we’ll
be covering more vocabulary for talking about
health.
CoffeeBreakSpanish: Lesson 28 - Bonus Vocabulary
la espalda
back
el tobillo
ankle
el dedo
finger
la rodilla
knee
el codo
elbow
el cuello
neck
la muñeca
wrist
no puedo mover ...
I can’t move ...
Note that with the phrase no puedo mover ... you use the definite article, eg. no puedo mover la rodilla, means
“I can’t move my knee”, but it literally would be translated as “I can’t move the knee”.
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Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 28
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