The weather: What’s the weather like? (el tiempo: ¿qué tiempo hace?)

Talking about the weather may seem a boring excuse when there’s nothing more interesting to talk about. However, it is indeed one of the most common topics of conversation in any language. This week we’re going to learn everything we need to discuss the weather (el tiempo) in Spanish.

Let’s start with the basics. Try to review the meanings of the translations in the following box:

The weather, what’s the weather like? (literally, ¿qué tiempo hace? Means “what weather does it make?”… strange, I know)

NOW, in order to answer ¿qué tiempo hace? You have a few possibilities depending on what you want to say. Above, we use Hace…, which in English would be “it is…” but it literally means “it makes…”:

NOTE the “Hace sol”, literally means “It makes sun”, although, in practical terms, they mean the same

… and now allow us an excuse to introduce MUY vs. MUCHO

Before we continue with a bit of vocab, please allow us to use the weather to introduce a necessary distinction, MUY vs. MUCHO/A/OS/AS

Check the box below:

 

We introduce this here because it’s something that confuses beginners at this stage…

Simply put, if you read the examples above (I’ll let you translate those), MUY is always followed by adjectives, and it doesn’t change for gender or number. It’s equivalent to VERY.

MUCHO is followed by nouns, and it changes for gender and number depending on the noun. It’s the equivalent of A LOT OF or LOTS OF. When MUCHO goes after a verb but is not followed by a noun (like the last two sentences in the bubble above), it doesn’t change, and it means A LOT.

The OPPOSITE of muy and mucho is POCO (“little” or a “little”, “not much”)

Now let’s go back to our ever-expanding vocab with…

The seasons… (las estaciones)

¿Qué significa?             ¿Can you guess the meaning? 

 

Months of the year (los meses del año)

 

Notice that the months of the year in Spanish are in lowercase. They are masculine nouns (the word MES, month, is masculine). Ps. We have twelve months, too.
¡OJO!

The months of the year and the date (los meses del año y la fecha)

Numbers 31-200s (los números 31-200s)

Do you remember the numbers from 0 to 30?

 

… now we keep going

¡OJO! Did you notice that we don’t use “AND” after the hundreds? That’s why we say CIENTO UNO or CIENTO TRES and not *ciento y uno as in English “one hundred and one”.

Another little thing. As you know, UNO turns into UN when followed by a masculine noun. That’s why we say “Ciento un dálmatas”, for example.

Irregular verb: estar (to be) (verbo irregular: el verbo estar)

Last week we saw some important irregular verbs. Today we are going to explain an essential one. You partially know it already: ESTAR.

Let’s start with the conjugation:

Yo	estoy
Tú	estás
Él, ella, usted	está
Nosotros/as	estamos
Vosotros/as	estáis
Ellos, ellas, ustedes	están

 

 

Now, let’s start talking about ESTAR seriously!

ESTAR is used in many different ways. This trimester we are going to see the 3 main usages of ESTAR.

Keep in mind that ESTAR is also only “half” of the “TO BE” equivalent in Spanish… SER is the other half… they are like separated twin siblings. They are close in meaning, yet they have very precise different usages. Together they cover most of the lexical and grammatical fields that are covered by “TO BE” in English…

A bit more about that later.

Now, let’s focus on the 3 main usages of ESTAR.

ESTAR usage #1: transitory states of being (adjectives)

We use ESTAR when we are using adjectives that describe transitory states of being, that is, emotions and those states that vary and change… If you’re sick or bored or happy or … those are transitory states… they change all the time and don’t last forever!

In the next table, you have a few adjectives expressing emotions and transitory states that you can add to your vocab. We give you the masculine and feminine endings for those with a masculine and feminine form, but just one form for those that don’t change for gender.

aburrido/a	bored	genial	amazing
cansado/a	tired	fantástico/a	fantastic
preocupado/a	worried	excelente	excellent
nervioso/a	nervous	contento/a	content
triste	sad	feliz	happy
enojado/a	angry	alegre	happy
furioso/a	furious	emocionado/a	excited
asustado/a	scared	sorprendido/a	surprised
estresado/a	stressed	orgulloso/a	proud
molesto/a	annoyed	relajado/a	relaxed
enfermo/a	sick	sano/a	healthy
ocupado/a	busy	lleno/a	full

ESTAR usage #2: location… “where is…?”

Perhaps the most important usage of ESTAR is the expression of LOCATION, that is, saying where someone or something is. From the smallest (¿dónde está mi teléfono?) to the largest (¿dónde está Australia?), if you are asking or expressing WHERE something or someone is, you use ESTAR.

In the following examples, we have a conversation with ESTAR expressing location. We also have a few “locating” words (coloured) generally used to indicate the location (these are prepositions and adverbs).

We will see these “locating” words in bold in the future, but it’s good for your Spanish if you remember these basic ones!

ESTAR usage #3: present continuous (actions in progress)

We saw the two expressions  below when discussing the weather:

Both está lloviendo and está nevando express an action in progress, that is, happening as we speak.

Let’s take the verb NEVAR, (to snow). You can conjugate “Nieva mucho en Finlandia”, that is, “It snows a lot in Finland”, or you can use the present continuous to say that it is snowing now: ¡Está nevando! (It’s snowing!).

In English, we create the present continuous form to refer to actions in progress by conjugating TO BE (it is) and adding the GERUND, that is, the -ING form of a verb (snowing). Thus, we can say, “I’m studying Spanish”, or “She’s eating a whole tub of ice cream while watching a rom-com”, or “We’re singing, and we’re drinking, and we’re being silly.”

In Spanish, the present continuous, o “presente continuo,” is created and used precisely in the same way: we conjugate ESTAR and add a GERUND:

Yo estoy	hablando
Tú estás	hablando
Él, ella, used está	bebiendo
Nosotros/as estamos	bebiendo
Vosotros/as estáis	viviendo
Ellos, ellas, ustedes están	viviendo

 

Note that the GERUNDIO in Spanish is created by replacing the infinitive ending in the following ways:

-AR is replaced by -ANDO (HABLAR > HABLANDO)

 

-ER and -IR are replaced by -IENDO (BEBER > BEBIENDO; VIVIR > VIVIENDO)

 

¡OJO! Did you notice? Unlike other European languages, the GERUNDIO in Spanish always ends in -O; that is, it doesn’t change for gender or number.

¡OJO! Careful! When an infinitive ends in a vowel plus –er or –ir (like LEER or OÍR), the gerund -IENDO ending is replaced by -YENDO:

Leer: Ella está leyendo un libro (not *leiendo).

Oír: Estoy oyendo el viento (not *oiendo)

And finally… SER or ESTAR?

Have you realised that both ESTAR and SER mean TO BE in English… well, we have learnt some uses already, but if you still have a slight problem with: When do we use ESTAR, and when do we use SER?

There are a few rules… let’s have a look at the basics:

We use SER to express essential identity qualities (things that are more or less permanent or essential or consubstantial to us). Things close to our identity, for example:

Names: “Soy Pedro, ella es Elena”

“Permanent” qualities: “Ella es alta e inteligente”

Origin: “Mis amigos son canadienses”

Profession: “Mis padres son profesores”

We use ESTAR to express temporary or circumstantial qualities (things, emotions… that are not so permanent or essential or consubstantial to us), as well as location and actions in progress, as we just saw in the previous pages:

Transitory states: “Estamos un poco tristes hoy”

Location: “Estoy en mi casa”

Actions in progress: “Estoy bebiendo cervezas”

 

…

Next week, we will have an easy one… a bit of a rest before the last stretch!

¡Chao!