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CoffeeBreakSpanish.com In this edition: making arrangements and irregular verbs Lesson 44 Notes ¿Qué hacemos esta noche? Making arrangements Programme Notes Coffee Break Spanish notes guide you through the content of each lesson. Lesson 44 is the first of two lessons in which we’ll talk about making arrangements. This lesson introduces the verb ir which is an irregular verb. Regular verbs Before we tackle the idea of irregular verbs, let’s consider the verbs we have already come across in the past few lessons. Take, for example, the verb cenar meaning “to dine” or “to have dinner”. The full conjugation is given below: cenar - to dine ceno cenamos cenas cenáis cena cenan We’ve come to recognise these endings (-o, -as, -a, -amos, -áis, -an) as the endings of a “regular -ar verb” in the present tense. This means that for many verbs we can simply remove the -ar ending of the infinitive and add the endings to it to conjugate the verb in full. We’ve also come across some verbs which follow other regular patterns, although we haven’t covered these in great detail as yet. Think of comer meaning “to eat”, or “to have lunch”. The full conjugation of comer is given below to allow you to compare it to cenar. comer - to eat como comemos comes coméis come comen Note that here the endings are very similar to the -ar endings, but they use “-e-” as the vowel rather than “-a”, eg. comemos as opposed to cenamos. Since verbs like cenar and comer follow regular patterns, they’re called “regular verbs”. However, in most languages, Spanish – and English – included, there are verbs which do not follow the regular patterns. Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 44 page 1 Some English examples Let’s consider for a moment some examples of regular English verbs. to walk I walk we walk you walk you walk he/she/it walks they walk to speak I speak we speak you speak you speak he/she/it speaks they speak You’ll notice from the tables above that these regular English verbs have only one change: the “he/ she/it” form adds -s to the end of the other forms. Now consider an irregular verb in English: to be I am we are you are you are he/she/it is they are In this example there are three completely different words used: “am”, “are” and “is”. This verb doesn’t follow regular patterns, so it is an irregular verb. Irregular verbs in Spanish There are quite a number of irregular verbs in Spanish. Don’t be too concerned, though: even the irregularities are often regular! This may seem confusing, but as you become more familiar with irregular verbs, you’ll recognise more and more patterns. You will also find that it’s often the very common verbs which are irregular. This is the case in most languages: as languages change over time, it is normally the words which are used most often in daily speech which change the most over the centuries. The verb “to be” is one of the most commonly used words or concepts in any language, so it’s hardly surprising that it’s very often an irregular verb in many languages. The example used in lesson 44 was another very common verb: “to go”. In Spanish, this is the verb ir. The full conjugation is given below: ir - to go voy vamos vas vais va van If we put aside the fact that the words voy or vamos seem to have very little to do with the infinitive ir, you can immediately see that even this irregular verb follows familiar patterns. Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 44 page 2 Another irregular verb introduced in lesson 44 was hacer, meaning “to do”: hacer - to do / to make hago hacemos haces hacéis hace hacen Again, like ir, where the particular irregularity in the conjugation was in the “I” part, hacer becomes hago in the “I” form. If we apply the theory that it’s the most commonly used forms which change the most over time, people do tend to talk about themselves, hence the fact that the “I” form is very likely to be the most irregular form of an irregular verb. Making arrangements This lesson introduced the concept of making arrangements. We used the phrase: ¿qué hacemos esta noche? what are we doing this evening? This could equally be translated as “what will we do this evening”, even though this English form implies a future tense and the Spanish form is very definitely the present tense, hacemos. To answer the question, it is possible to make suggestions using verbs in the 1st person plural, the “we” form: ¿vamos al cine? “shall we go to the cinema?” Again, note that this literally means “are we going to the cinema?” or “do we go to the cinema”. Other examples include: ¿cenamos en un restaurante? “shall we eat in a restaurant?” ¿vamos a una fiesta? “shall we go to a party?” ¿estudiamos el español? “shall we study Spanish?” We will cover more examples in lesson 45. A challenge Using the list of regular verbs below, try to come up with more suggestions in answer to the question ¿qué hacemos esta noche? Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 44 page 3 Some verbs with regular “we” forms estudiar to study hablar to speak charlar / platicar to chat tocar el piano to play the piano jugar al fútbol to play football / soccer ver la televisión to watch television cantar to sing bailar to dance For your convenience we have provided the correct “we” forms on page 5. Don’t forget that you can post your own efforts on the Radio Lingua Network forum: Direct link: http://www.radiolinguamedia.com/bb/cbf-bb/viewtopic.php?t=74 Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 44 page 4 Suggested answers Please note that although the suggested translations all begin with “shall we...” which is actually the future tense in English, the Spanish verbs are in the present tense, so the literal translation is really “are we studying Spanish” or “do we study Spanish”. It is perfectly normal to use the Spanish present tense in this way. “we” forms for the previous examples ¿estudiamos el español? shall we study Spanish? ¿hablamos italiano? shall we speak Italian? ¿charlamos / platicamos con nuestros amigos? shall we chat with our friends? ¿tocamos el piano? shall we play the piano? ¿jugamos al fútbol? shall we play football / soccer? ¿vemos la televisión? shall we watch television? ¿cantamos una canción? shall we sing a song? ¿bailamos juntos? shall we dance together? All materials ©Copyright Radio Lingua Ltd 2007 Coffee Break Spanish: Lesson 44 page 5