Semana 4 – Mi rutina

 

Vocabulario: el hogar (home)

This week we’re going more in-depth with el hogar (home), and we encourage you to add more vocabulary to your list:

La casa	House
Casa adosada	Terrace house
El chalé (o chalet):	Townhouse
El tejado	Roof tiles
Las ventanas	Windows
Las habitaciones	Rooms
La cochera	Carport
El jardín	Garden
El césped	The grass/lawn
El patio	The yard
La azotea	Rooftop
El ático:	The penthouse
El apartamento	The aparment
El estudio	The studio
El primer piso	First floor/first story
El segundo piso	Second floor/second story
El balcón	The balcony
La planta baja	Ground floor
La entrada	Entrance
La calle (c/)	Street
La avenida (avda.):	Avenue

Of course, you’ll also need to talk about your surroundings and neighbourhood/suburb (barrio):

En las afueras	Outskirts; suburbs​
En el campo	The country (countryside)​
En el centro	Downtown​
En un barrio/ vecindario	In a quiet district/neighbourhood
Una piscina	A pool​
Un patio	A courtyard​
Un jardín	A backyard/garden​
Habitaciones	Rooms​
Pocos/muchos vecinos	A few/many neighbours​
Pocas/muchas escaleras	A few/a lot of stairs​
Mucha luz	A lot of light​

Finally, you will also need some adjectives and another vocabulary that will help you describe these:

Amueblado/a	furnished​
Sin amueblar	unfurnished​
Luminoso/a	bright​
Silencioso/ tranquilo	quiet​
Ruidoso/a	noisy​
Antiguo/a	old​
Rugosa/o	rough/ wrinkled
Grueso	thick
Céntrico/a	central​
Oscuro/a	dark​
Nuevo/a	new​
Caro/a	expensive​
Barato/a	cheap

Let’s look at a conversation between friends

 

Los números ordinales: ordinal numbers

Languages have both cardinal (normal, one, two, three, four) and ordinal (first, second, third, fourth) numbers.

Here’s how to use them in Spanish in the context of floors/stories of a building. Start at the bottom with the “ground floor”, planta baja, and then go up to the “first floor” or primer piso:

 

Décima planta

Noveno piso

Octavo piso

Séptima planta

Sexta planta

Quinto piso

Cuarta planta

Tercer piso/ el tercero

Segunda planta

Primer piso/ el primero

Planta baja

¡OJO! Notice that these numbers need to agree in gender (see the example: piso vs planta, both mean “floor”/” story”) with that which they are describing.

As always, there are a couple of further rules. Sorry!

Primer and tercer take a short form if the thing that they are describing is masculine:

 

If you see these with a definite article like el or la, then we are using this structure to shorten our sentence (and assuming that you know what we’re talking about or that we’ve already mentioned the topic):

 

Direct object pronouns: pronombres de objeto directo

The direct object pronouns sound boring, but I promise that they are very useful. They will help you make shorter, less repetitive, and robotic sentences!

To be able to get to those shorter sentences, we need to do 2 things:

• Identify the direct object in a sentence
• Replace it with the direct object pronoun

Let’s start with how to identify a direct object.

In a sentence, usually, the direct object is telling us what someone is doing:

“Someone is doing something“.

(subject + verb + direct object)

Let’s use “my dad is making a meat pie” as an example.

In this sentence, there’s a lot going on:

• your “dad” is the subject of the sentence because he is the person completing the action
• the action is the verb “making.”
• the thing that he is making, the meat pie, is the direct object

What we’re going to do with the direct object pronouns is allow you to keep talking about that pie without repeating the word pie. We do this in English, too; take a look at this example:

• My dad is making a meat pie. He is making it in the oven.

In Spanish, that would look like this.

Mi padre cocina pay de carne. Lo cocina en el horno.

Before we go any further, let’s look at some more examples. The Direct objects are in bold.

 

As you can see, the direct object is the thing that receives that action that the subject is undertaking in your sentence. The direct object can be a person or a thing, so watch out! When it’s a person, we need to add the personal a to our sentence:

 

 

Let’s move on to how to use the direct object pronouns:

Pronouns are words that replace nouns (or names). They help us make shorter sentences.

Think of it like dialogue in a mafia movie:

 

Instead of repeating the word money, Mafioso 2 has used the direct object pronoun “it”.

That’s all we’re doing here.

To do this in Spanish, we need the following direct object pronouns:

	Singular	Plural
Primera persona	me	nos
Segunda persona	te	os
Tercera persona	lo/la	los/las

Some examples of these in action:

Sujeto	Verbo	OD (¿qué? ¿a quién?)		Pronombre necesario	Frase con pronombre
Mi madre	quiere	(a mí)	ME		Mi madre me quiere
Mi suegra	no quiere	(a ti)	TE		Mi suegra no te quiere
Mi abuelo	quiere	cerveza vino	¡OJO! LA LO		Mi abuelo la/lo quiere
Mi vecino	quiere	(a mi familia)	NOS		Mi vecino nos quiere
Mi vecina	no quiere	(a vosotros)	OS		Mi vecina no os quiere
Mis primos	quieren	pizzas mojitos	¡OJO! LAS LOS		Mis primos las/los quieren

Finally, paying attention to where to place the DOP is important. If using a DOP with a conjugated verb, it must go immediately before the conjugated verb:

 

If using a DOP with an infinitive or with periphrasis (2 verbs working together), it can go immediately before the conjugated verb or tack on to the end of the verbs:

 

 

¡OJO! A common mistake is when we attempt to replace a noun in the sentence with a DOP. Remember, nouns can also be subjects or even indirect objects (we will look into this later…) Just remember that the subject is the person or thing doing the action, and it has its own pronouns that replace them -the personal subject pronouns (yo, tú, ella, nosotras etc…).

Reflexive verbs

There are a series of actions that we need to do every day: wake up, get up, take a shower, brush our teeth, eat breakfast, go to work or study, etc. In order to talk about many of these actions, we need to use reflexive verbs.

By the end of this week, you should have a solid grasp of the reflexive verbs!

No, these aren’t verbs acting on something involuntarily, but rather, verbs that we use to talk about “self-care” activities, usually things related to our daily routine and that we do to get ready for the day (early in the morning) or to get ready for bed (late at night).

These verbs have a reflexive pronoun attached to them:

Levantarse

Lavarse

To use these verbs, we usually need to match the reflexive pronoun to the subject of our sentence and move the reflexive pronoun in front of the conjugated verb:

Me levanto a las seis de la mañana

Te lavas los dientes

The verb is conjugated as normal, but don’t forget to match that reflexive pronoun and move it in front of your conjugated verb.

Here are the pronouns you need to use:

First-person: me

Second person: te

Third person: se

First-person plural: nos

Second person plural: se (ustedes) / os (vosotros)

Third person: see

 

As you can see, the pronoun belongs to the person that does the action, as adding the pronoun is like saying in English (myself, yourself, himself, herself, our selves etc…)

Los pronombres reflexivos son iguales a los de OD excepto por la tercera persona. Ya los conoces por el verbo “llamarse” (me llamo, te llamas…)

(Yo) me	miro	en el espejo
(Tú) te	miras	en el espejo
(Él, ella, usted) se	mira	en el espejo
(Nosotros) nos	miramos	en el espejo
(Vosotros) os	miráis	en el espejo
(Ellos, ellas, ustedes) se	miran	en el espejo

Here are some common reflexive verbs that you will need to use:

Despertarse	To wake up
Levantarse	To get up
Lavarse los dientes	To brush your teeth
Lavarse la cara:	To wash your fase
Ducharse	To shower
Bañarse:	To bathe
Secarse	To dry oneself
Secarse el pelo	To dry your hair
Mirarse en el espejo	To look in the mirror
Maquillarse:	To put make up on
Afeitarse	To shave
Vestirse	To get dressed
Desvestirse/desnudarse	To undress
Ponerse	To put on
Acostarse:	To lie down
Dormirse	To go to sleep

 Now, I know there is a lot of vocabulary to learn this week; whatever has been working for you, keep doing it!

¡Hasta pronto!