Complete Spanish

Track 32

1. One Spanish adjective, two English words Concept

Aburrido covers both boring and bored. English uses two different words to mark the difference; Spanish uses one word and makes you choose ser or estar.

es aburrido
he is boring: characteristic
está aburrido
he is bored: state

Es aburrida · Son aburridos · Están aburridos

Watch the agreement: she is boring is es aburrida, not "aburrido". Spanish is more subtle than the English here.

2. Where you are from is a characteristic Grammar

Where you are is a state, but where you are from is characteristic of you. Spanish puts the preposition first: literally from where are you.

¿De dónde eres? (where are you from?)
¿De dónde son?
where are they from? Characteristic.
¿Dónde están?
where are they? A location, so a state.
You will hear ¿De dónde eres? constantly, which makes it the easiest way to remember the irregular eres.

3. de, and the ideology inside old words Vocabulary

De is from or of, and it turns up as a building block in Latin-English words.

de
from, of
libre
free
liberar
to liberate

Deliver is de plus something to do with freeing, so "from freeing". That makes much more sense in the older uses, to deliver a baby or deliver me from evil, than in the modern sense of delivering a package.

You see the ideology in vocabulary much more clearly in the older uses of a word. Decipher is a mix of Latin and Arabic: de plus Arabic sifr, zero, so it is something like "to go from zero".

Libre against English -liver is another instance of the b and v grey area, like saber and savvy.

4. Adjectives not ending in o do not change Rule

Libre ends in e, so it does not change for masculine and feminine. Only adjectives ending in o change.

Estoy libre · Soy libre

Both work here, with different meanings: estoy libre is free from work or exams, a state. Soy libre is being a free person, a characteristic.

5. persona as a safety net Method

Some adjectives take both verbs, some take only one, and there is no way for a learner to know which. Estoy ocupado is fine, but "soy ocupado" is bad Spanish.

soy una persona ocupada (I am a busy person)

The trick: say I am a busy person instead. Then persona is what goes with soy, and saying I am a person is about as characteristic as it gets. Whatever describes persona after that does not matter.

Soy una persona libre · Soy una persona casada · Somos personas ocupadas · Es una persona preocupada

Different dialects also disagree about which verb an adjective takes. Casado (married, from casa, so literally "housed") goes with ser in some places and estar in others: they cannot agree on whether being married is a characteristic or a state. The persona route sidesteps that entirely.

Remember persona is feminine because the word is feminine, not because of who is speaking. A man also says soy una persona ocupada.

6. New vocabulary Vocabulary

aburrido
boring, or bored
ocupado
busy, literally occupied
preocupado
worried, literally preoccupied
casado
married (from casa, "housed")
libre
free

Estoy ocupado · Estamos ocupados · Estoy preocupado · Está preocupado

Careful not to confuse casado (married) with cansado (tired).