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¶ Introducing Places in Town: Masculine Nouns
Welcome back to another episode of Coffee Break Spanish. This is episode 13. And in lesson 13, you're going to be learning about places in the town. How to ask for simple directions. You'll be using it the phrase, ¿Dónde está? Where is. ¿Dónde está? And we can begin by asking something like, ¿Dónde está la catedral? Where is the cathedral?
By the end of this lesson, you'll know how to ask for lots of places in the town and also to understand directions when you're given them. I hope you enjoy the lesson. so we're finally out in the town in spain or in another spanish-speaking country and today one of the first things that we're going to learn are the words for some of the places that we might encounter in this town
So, we're going to start with some masculine words. Remember that all Spanish words are either masculine or feminine. And we're going to start with some masculine words. Cara, can you repeat after me? And again, we'll have all the listeners repeating with you. So first of all... El museo is the... Museum. It's the museum, that's correct. It ends in O, the word museo ends in O, and lots of Spanish words that end in O are masculine. It's preceded therefore by...
El, the masculine word for the. Let's now think about something else, another masculine word, and that would be el banco. El banco. El banco. El banco. El banco would be? The bank. The bank, of course. So I hope everybody's remembering to repeat along with Cara. We've had el museo. El museo. And el banco. Muy bien. Another word would be el restaurante.
That's it. Remember the Spanish R. I'm sure you all remember the lesson that we were trying to teach you how to best pronounce the Spanish R with the, similar to the American English barrel, the double T sound, or arder in words like... Kara, you're much better at me than that, so I won't say any more. So remember those hours. El restaurante. El restaurante. Muy bien. Okay, so we've had el banco, el museo, el restaurante.
Obviously, the restaurant, another masculine word. And one more masculine word we'll learn, and that is el mercado. El mercado. El mercado. El mercado. Can you work out how that would be spelled? M-E-R-C-A-D-O. Good. A-D-O at the end. Ado. Ado. And in actual fact, in some parts of Spain and other parts of Latin America, you would actually say el mercado. El mercado.
Yeah, but probably easier to stick to el mercado, but make sure it's a soft D sound in the middle. El mercado. El mercado. Muy bien. So, let's run through our four masculine words first. El banco. el museo el restaurante el mercado
¶ Introducing Places in Town: Feminine Nouns and Review
El mercado. Muy bien. Now we're going to introduce some feminine words here as well for other places in the town that you might need to visit while you're in holiday or traveling in a Spanish-speaking country. And first of all, we'll start with one place that in many... Spanish and Hispanic towns is the centre of the town, and that is La Plaza Mayor. La Plaza Mayor. Or, in Latin American Spanish, La Plaza Mayor. La Plaza Mayor.
So La Plaza Mayor or La Plaza Mayor is the mean square. La Plaza Mayor. La Plaza Mayor. La Plaza Mayor. Just a cultural note here, I've certainly been in plenty of Plazas Mayores in different towns in Spain, and they're always very, very nice places to be. For example, in Madrid, there's restaurants all around the Plaza Mayor.
And there are even concerts and theatre performances performed in the square. My favourite Plaza Mayor in the whole of Spain and all the cities I've visited is Salamanca. If anyone has ever been to Salamanca, the Plaza Mayor is... Preciosa, preciosa. So, La Plaza Mayor, the main square. La Plaza Mayor. La Plaza Mayor. Okay, somewhere else that you might well start your tourist quest would be the Tourist Information Office. In Spanish this is the office of tourism. La oficina de turismo.
de turismo. La oficina de turismo. Muy bien. Now, in Latin American Spanish, you would say la oficina de turismo. Okay, so it's the Tourist Information Office and that's where you can ask many of the questions that we're going to be learning today. Moving on, another feminine place would be La Piscina. Piscina. La piscina. La piscina. Now, if you're familiar with French, then you're very likely to know what la piscina is.
A swimming pool. It's a swimming pool, that's right, or the swimming pool, la piscina. And just another pronunciation point about Latin American Spanish, you wouldn't say la piscina, but la piscina. La piscina. Muy bien. And that indeed sounds even more like the French, la piscine. OK, so we've had three feminine words so far. La plaza mayor. La plaza mayor. La oficina de turismo. La oficina de turismo. La piscina.
La piscina. And one final one, that is la catedral. La catedral. La catedral. La catedral. Okay, muy bien. La catedral means... The cathedral? The cathedral, yeah. And there's lots of cathedrals in many Spanish towns and indeed towns all across the Spanish-speaking world. So, we have eight different places in the town. Let's run through them all again, starting with the masculine ones. El Museo.
El museo. El banco. El banco. El restaurante. El restaurante. El mercado. El mercado. La catedral. La catedral. La plaza mayor. La plaza mayor. La piscina.
¶ Asking 'Where Is?' and Practicing Phrases
La piscina. La oficina de turismo. La oficina de turismo. Muy bien. Tried to trick you out there with saying that last one very quickly. Okay. We need to ask... We could obviously stop someone in the street and just say... la catedral and look a bit lost but it might be better to say where is the catedral and we've already come across the word for where can you remember how you say where are you from
¿Dónde eres? ¿De dónde eres? ¿De dónde eres? So the word for where is? ¿Dónde? ¿Dónde? Okay, and we need to remember our nice soft Spanish sound. ¿Dónde? ¿Dónde? And where is, is ¿Dónde está? ¿Dónde está? ¿Dónde está? ¿Dónde está? Okay, so can everybody repeat this? ¿Dónde está? Cara. ¿Dónde está? Okay. And in Spanish, you would probably be more likely to run it together and say something like, ¿Dónde está? ¿Dónde está? ¿Dónde está?
¿Dónde está? So, what we're going to see is, where is the museum? ¿Dónde está el museo? Muy bien. ¿Dónde está el museo? ¿Dónde está el museo? Now there's one easy way to say excuse me or to stop someone in the street and that is by saying please, por favor. Por favor. Por favor, ¿Dónde está el museo?
Por favor, ¿dónde está el museo? Muy bien. So, I'm now going to ask you to come up with some other phrases using the words we've already learned in this lesson. How would you say, excuse me, where is the main square? Kana, can you help the listeners? Por favor, ¿dónde está el Plaza Mayor? La Plaza Mayor, sí. ¿Dónde está la Plaza Mayor? ¿Dónde está la Plaza Mayor? Sí, por favor, ¿dónde está la Plaza Mayor?
Por favor, ¿dónde está la Plaza Mayor? Muy bien. How would you say, excuse me, where is the bank? ¿Cara? Por favor, ¿dónde está el banco? Muy bien. Por favor, ¿dónde está el banco? Por favor, ¿dónde está el banco? Can we have, where is the museum? Where is the museum? Ok, por favor, ¿dónde está el museo? And what about, where is the tourist information office?
¶ Social Media Break and Promotional Messages
Por favor, ¿dónde está la oficina de turismo? Muy bien. Por favor, ¿dónde está la oficina de turismo? Okay, we'll be back in just a moment. When you're not listening to Coffee Break Spanish, you can still practice your Spanish with our regular posts on social media. Find us on Facebook. Just search for Coffee Break Spanish. We're Learn Spanish on Twitter, and you can keep up with the team through our regular posts on Instagram.
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¶ Giving Directions: Straight, Right, and Left
Okay, let's get on with the lesson. So we've learned how to ask where are certain things. And of course, if you've got a map, then somebody could point to a place on the map and show you exactly where it is. And for that purpose, we're going to learn a couple of other phrases. They might say, Está aquí. So, el museo está aquí. El museo está aquí. And they might even start by saying something like, mire. Mire. Mire.
Mire. And mire is the polite form of saying look. Mire, señor, el museo está aquí. Mire, señor, la... What did you say again? El museo. El museo está aquí. Mire, señor, el museo está aquí. Mire, señor, el museo está aquí. Muy bien. Now, if you don't have a map, then perhaps someone would want to give you actual directions and they might want to say things like turn left, turn right, go straight on. And we're going to learn these now. The first of these is
Siga todo recto. Siga todo recto. Let's try to get more of a Spanish sounding O. Siga todo recto. Siga todo recto. Muy bien, muy bien. Siga todo recto. Siga todo recto means go straight on. Siga todo recto. Siga todo recto. And siga literally means follow. So, follow straight ahead. Follow straight on. Siga todo recto. Siga todo recto. Okay. Now, turn. The word turn in Spanish. There's actually a couple of words for turn, but we're going to stick with one.
And that is doble. Doble. Doble. Doble. Doble. Muy bien. Doble literally means double, so it's almost like saying double back, but obviously we're not talking about fully turning around. Doble is just turn in Spanish. Doble. Doble. And you might want to turn left or right. We're going to start with right. It's a bit easier than left. So we'll start with doble a la derecha. Doble a la derecha. Doble a la derecha.
Derecha. Muy bien. The cha sound. You're doing that well, Cara. Derecha. Derecha. Okay, remember the smiley bit that you're supposed to smile when you say CH in Spanish. Cha. Cha. Derecha. Muy bien. Doble a la derecha. So that's turn right. Turn left is doble a la izquierda. Muy bien. Izquierda. Now, not to complicate things, but in Latin American Spanish, you would say Izquierda. Izquierda. Izquierda. Izquierda. Doble a la izquierda. Doble.
¶ Discussing Distance and Lesson Recap
Muy bien. So we have... Muy bien, muy bien. Bueno, una cosa más. One more thing. Or two more words, at least. You might... be looking for a particular thing in town it might be the bank it might be the tourist information office or whatever and you have identified where it is and the person has given you directions the one thing that you might want to ask is
is it far or is it near nearby so to say is it far you use that same word for is which is is that is that is that and the word for far is lejos lejos lejos lejos está lejos está lejos está lejos muy bien We have already come across a phrase, are you from here? Cara, can you remember how you would say, are you from here? So from here in Spanish is... So how would you now say, putting these two bits of the jigsaw together...
Is it far from here? Está lejos de aquí. Muy bien. And how would you say, Is the museum far from here? Almost right. In actual fact, you turn it around a little and you say, El museo está lejos de aquí. Okay, so raising your tone at the end to say, to ask a question, but to make a statement, el museo está lejos de aquí. The museum is far from here. El museo está lejos de aquí. Muy bien. The opposite of lejos is cerca. Cerca. Cerca. In Latin America, cerca. Cerca. So how would you say...
Is the bank near here? Listeners, can you work that one out? Is the bank near here? What would you say? El banco está cerca de aquí. Muy bien. And you remembered to turn it around a little, el banco. El banco está cerca de aquí. Muy bien. We've actually covered quite a lot in this lesson. We've talked about different places in the town. We learned eight different places and we'll be adding to that next week. And we've also learned to ask where is something? ¿Dónde está? ¿Dónde está?
We learned some directions. Siga todo recto. Siga todo recto. Doble a la derecha. Doble a la izquierda. Doble a la izquierda. And está lejos and está cerca. Está lejos and está cerca. Is it far and is it near? And that's where we're going to leave it today for this edition of Coffee Break Spanish. Thanks for joining us and we hope it's been useful.
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