Tengo que lavar los trastes

Sometimes there are things that we just have to do.  Well, if you ever need to tell someone what that something you have to do is in Spanish, then you'll need the expression tener que.

Tener by itself means "to have".

Tengo 21 años
I'm 21

Tengo dos coches
I have two cars

Add the word que after it and now it means to have to.

Tengo que lavar los trastes
I have to wash the dishes

Tengo que recoger mi madre del aeropuerto
I have to pick my mom up from the airport

You may be thinking "Doesn't que mean what?" Well you're right, it does.  But combine it with the word tener and the meaning changes.  Don't try and figure it out, it's an idiomatic expression and you just have to memorize it.  

Tienes que memorizarlo
You have to memorize it

You'll hear tener que a lot, and if you actually use your Spanish in real life you'll end up using it a lot so commit this one to memory.


Here's a link to a free podcast on tener que.  Be sure to go get your free lesson right away because it won't be free forever.   It's a great podcast and it actually has even more great Spanish you need to know like the Spanish contraction al and the verb quedarse. You'll also learn about the word enamorados (people in love).

In fact, if you want to learn more about enamorados and how to talk about the different stages of romance, then take a look at this blog post:

Soy muy noviera

That's it for today, and be sure to follow or subscribe to this blog by email!  Also be sure to check out my other blogs My Spanish Notes and No Seas Pelangoche.

¡Chao!

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Tuve un buen tiempo

I love to help people with their Spanish.  Every week I'm exposed to many beginners and people just starting their journey down the road to Spanish fluency.  With that said, I hear a lot of the same errors over and over again.  So this the first of a new series of posts called Spanish Blunders to help you identify and correct (and hopefully prevent) your mistakes.

I also do a lot of socializing with up and coming Spanish speakers, and it's not uncommon for me to get messages like this after a social event:

Tuve un buen tiempo
I had a good time

Bless their hearts, I'm so glad my friends are enjoying themselves.  Unfortunately, that's not how you say I had a good time.

In their defense this is a very common mistake, so today I'm going to talk about the right way to say this.

The correct expression in Spanish to talk about having a good time is Pasarla bien.

The verb is pasar and one of it's meanings is to pass, as in to pass time.  Now let's look at a few examples of how to tell someone you had a good time.

La pasé bien anoche
I had a good time last night

¿La pasaste bien?
Did you have a good time?

 ¿La pasaron bien?
Did you all have a good time?

 La pasamos super bien en el cine
We had a really good time at the movies

Que la pases bien
Have a good time

Que bien lo paso contigo
I'm having a good time with you

No la pasé bien
I didn't have a good time

Notice in some examples I used la and in others lo.  So what I really should have said earlier is you can Pasarlo bien or Pasarla bien.  What's the difference?  In all honesty, I would just chalk this up to a regional difference.  Based on my experience I would say Pasarla bien is used in Latin America and Pasarlo bien in Spain.  The truth is you can use which ever version you like, because at the end of the day, nobody cares.

You'll see how fun it is when snows, they said.  You'll have an amazing time, they said.

Pobrecito, looks like he's not having much fun at all.

Lastly, I'm going to point you to a book that will help you fix a lot of the common mistakes people make.

I have a copy of Correct Your Spanish Blunders myself.  It's certainly helped me out a lot.  While there are a lot of Spanish books out there, very few of them give you the return on your investment like this one will.  If you're serious about learning Spanish, you need to have this book in your collection.

That's it!  Be sure look to the top right-hand side of the page to follow or become an email subscriber to this blog to get more great lessons to help you learn Spanish.  And be sure to follow us on Facebook:

Be sure to Like Helping You Learn Spanish on Facebook!

¡Chao!

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Making conversations easier with Google Translate

Cross-posted from the Google Translate Blog

Have you ever been in that frustrating situation where you meet someone -- yet can’t communicate because you don’t speak each other’s language? Well, hopefully communication can become a whole lot easier with the launch of the new Google Translate app for Android. The app now features faster and simpler speech translation, additional language support, and a sleek new look.

Converse without boundaries

Let’s say you're taking your first vacation abroad and decide to head to Spain. The only problem? You don't speak Spanish. Now -- equipped with just your Android device -- you can have a fully translated back-and-forth conversation from Spanish to English with very little work. All you need to do is open up your Translate app and press the microphone icon. We’ve also added gesture support, so with a simple turn of the screen, you can switch back and forth between languages. This makes ordering food in that authentic Tapas restaurant a whole lot easier!

More translate options for more languages

With today’s updated Translate app, we also offer more language support for our handwriting feature, allowing you to directly write words in Hebrew, Javanese, and Esperanto on your device screen and have them translated on the fly. You can also use our camera translation feature to take a photo of written text with your Android device and highlight which words you’d like to be translated, now including additional language support for Malay and Ukranian.

We hope Google Translate can continue to help break down more language barriers in easier ways, all on your mobile device. We'll be rolling the update out via the Google Play Store today and tomorrow. We hope you give it a whirl!

Posted by Matthew Gaba, Product Manager

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Save your flights and find them on all devices

When I'm planning a trip, I use Google Flight Search to find the option that's best for me. For those times when I'm not ready to book immediately, Flight Search now offers a "Saved Flights" feature that allows me to save useful flight information and retrieve it when I'm ready to book.

When I’m signed in to my Google account on my mobile phone or tablet, and find a flight option I'm interested in I click the star button to add it to my saved flights list.

I can then access my saved flights on any device at any time by clicking the star icon on the Flight Search home page.

Saved results reflect price changes that may have occurred since I added the flights to my list, giving me all the information I need to make a smart booking decision.

We hope this helps make your trip planning a little easier to manage.

Posted by Jirka Semecky, Software Engineer

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Make more of your day with the updated Google Search app for iOS

Like many of you, I feel like I’m always short on time — between work, shuttling my son around, meeting up with friends, and dealing with everyday chores. With more and more information to manage, we could all use a little extra help to get more out of our day. With the updated Google Search app for iPhones and iPads, we hope we can save you a bit more time each day — so you can spend it on more interesting things.

Here are a few new things you can do with the updated app:

• When there’s important stuff that you need to know right now, Google will now automatically send you a notification. For example, while I was busy getting my son ready this morning, a notification appeared on my lock screen telling me that I should leave for his dentist appointment right away because of a traffic jam. 

• You can now easily set reminders for yourself, and Google will even notify you when you're near the location for that particular task. So if you say "OK Google, remind me to mail the checks when I get home," you'll get a notification as soon as your house pulls into view. 

• Reminders can also be handy for keeping up with your favorite entertainment. Search for movies, albums, actors or artists, and click on "Remind me" — Google Now will let you know when a new movie is about to debut or your favorite band has a new album.

• You no longer need to comb through email to find an upcoming flight’s boarding pass or the tickets to your next movie or concert. The updated app will simply show you a Google Now card with your tickets when you arrive at the theatre or airport.

• Finally, even talking to Google got easier: when the app is open on your iPhone (4s and up) and iPad (2 and up), just say “OK Google” to ask any question out loud and get instant answers spoken back.

The updated Google Search app is available internationally, but reminders and “OK Google” hands free voice search work only in English for now. Everyone can enjoy the overall feature updates starting today.

You can download the updated Google Search app with Google Now from the App Store now — open it, sign in, and you’re ready to go. Don’t forget to drag it to your tray so it’s always handy.

Posted by Ian Wilkinson, Software Engineer

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Expressing accidental actions in Spanish

While I don't consider myself a teacher by any stretch of the imagination, today I'm going to try and simplify a concept that can be a sticking point for many learners of Spanish, expressing accidental actions.

Let's pretend you accidentally broke a glass and need to fess up to it in Spanish.  You may be tempted to think of translating "I broke the glass" as:

Rompí el vaso

And you'd be correct, but it begs the question "Did you break it on purpose or by accident?".

In fact, "I broke the glass" in English leaves you with the same doubt.  To resolve that doubt in English we simply add "by accident".

I broke the glass by accident

So how do we resolve this question in Spanish?  We combine a reflexive verb with an indirect object.

If you're like me, after reading that you immediately thought "What?  Can you say that in English?".  I hear you. Grammar explanations can be confusing, so I'm going to explain it to you in plain English.

Let's keep it simple and refer to this as "accidental actions".   While some people might consider this a somewhat advanced level of grammar , it's actually pretty easy to tell someone you did something by accident, just by using this simple pattern:

Se + (me, te, le, nos, les) +  third-person singular preterite verb conjugation

I'm sure you noticed this: "third-person singular preterite verb conjugation".

Well that's a mouthful isn't it?  All it means is you want the usted preterite conjugation of the verb.  If you're looking at a verb chart just look for the preterite (pretérito in Spanish) of "Usted (Ud), él, ella". In fact, take a look at the conjugation chart for romper.   To simplify things a little for this post we'll just call it the usted preterite conjugation.  

Here's our simplified pattern:

Se + (me, te, le, nos, les) +  usted preterite conjugation 

Let's go back to the broken glass example.  Notice that in the pattern you have a choice of  me, te, le, nos, and les. Since you're saying "I broke the glass by accident" you want to use "me".  I'll explain the other choices shortly.  You'll also need the usted past tense of the verb romper (to break), which is rompío.

Se me rompió el vaso
I broke the glass by accident

Simple, right?  Here's another example:

Se me perdió la llave
I lost the key by accident

Pretty straight-forward right?  What if we want to say "you broke the glass by accident" or you lost the key by accident"?

Let's take another look at our pattern.

Se + (me, te, le, nos, les) +  usted preterite conjugation 

OK, it's time to talk about those little me, te, le, nos and les words I mentioned earlier.  You use those indicate who performed the accidental action.

Me - I lost it:
Se me perdió la llave
I lost the key by accident

Te - You lost it:
Se te perdió la llave
You lost the key by accident

Le - He/she lost it:
Se le perdió la llave
He/she lost the key by accident

Nos - We lost it:
Se nos perdió la llave
We lost the key by accident

Les - They lost it:
Se les perdió la llave
They lost the key by accident

And there you have it.  Notice the conjugation of perder (perdió) never changed.   Pan comido, right?

That pattern works for anything you might do by accident.  You just need to memorize the pattern and learn how to conjugate verbs to the third person singular preterite tense (remember this mouthful from above?) which you've already learned or are in the process of learning anyway, so there's no extra work involved for you.

Let's look at another example:

Se les perdieron las llaves
They lost the keys by accident

Hold on, let's back up.  Did you notice that?

The verb perder was conjugated in the preterite past tense, but in the ellos, ellas, ustedes form.  In grammar speak it would be the:

Third-person plural preterite conjugation

 The past tense verb conjugation must match the number of "things" that were accidentally affected.  That means we need one more pattern that's just a little different than the first one.

Se + (me, te, le, nos, les) + third-person plural preterite verb conjugation

All this means is we have to conjugate to the ellos, ellas, ustedes form of the verb in the preterite tense.  Just take a look at the chart I pointed you to earlier.

Now let's review our broken glass example again:

Se me rompió el vaso
I broke the glass by accident

Only one glass was broken in that example.  So what if I broke more than one glass?  Then it changes to:

Se me rompieron los vasos
I broke the glasses by accident

Let's look at one more example:

Se les quedaron las llaves en casa
They left the keys at home by accident

Make sense?  If you're still confused don't worry about it, it just takes a little practice.   To start using this "accidental actions" construction all you need to do is memorize the two simple patterns and learn a few verb conjugations.

Don't obsess over understanding the grammar at first, the important thing is to start using the construction and pay special attention to it when you see or hear it.  Eventually the understanding of the grammar will "click" and everything will make sense.

Here's another bit of advice.  Don't feel like you have to learn everything at once.  Feel free to start with focusing on the things you do by accident first, then once you get a feel for that start focusing in on being able to talk about what others do on accident.

Here are a few websites you can look at for more examples of how to talk about accidental actions in Spanish:

Se with unintentional events

Spanish Reflexive Pronoun Se with Unplanned Occurrences

Obviously a key part of talking about accidental actions in Spanish is verb conjugations.  Conjugating verbs may seem intimidating, but it's really not that hard.  In fact, here's a great website with some very helpful conjugation charts.  This is a great site when you want to quickly look up the conjugations of a verb.  There's even a blank template so you can practice.

Fred F Jehle - Spanish Verb Forms

If you want to practice conjugating verbs then I have another recommendation, The Spaleon Verb Conjugation Trainer.  Although I don't use it anymore, it's still a kick-ass site.  You can select the verbs and the tense you want to practice, and they even have pre-selected sets of verbs (Basic, Regular, Irregular, Traveling and Learning) to make your practice easier.

I didn't use any other online verb conjugation trainers, but if Spaleon doesn't work for you just do a search in Google on verb conjugation trainers and you'll find plenty of other options.

Both of the sites I mentioned above are great, but there's no doubt in my mind that the the Verbarrator is the most effective verb conjugation tool available. You have to see it for yourself, it's a great tool.  I did a review of it and you can read the Verbarrator review here.  OK, it's not so much a review as it is a close up look at the product.  Think of it as a product tour.

With the three options I mentioned above for verb conjugations you have more than enough to become a super whiz at conjugating Spanish verbs.  But if you want more help with mastering how to talk about accidental actions in Spanish, read on.

A more interactive tool to help you nail down how to talk about accidental actions in Spanish is Learning Spanish Like Crazy Level 3.  It does a good job of covering this topic.  The course comes with over 30 lessons with each lesson being at least 25 minutes.  It devotes 2 and a half lessons (almost an hour) towards helping you learn how to use se to talk about accidental actions.  That's how I learned, so I know it works.

That's it for today.  I hope I was able to help you get a handle on talking about accidental actions in Spanish.

¡Hasta la  próxima!

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Fifteen years on—and we’re just getting started

Google Search is turning 15. Remember what it was like to search in 1998? You’d sit down and boot up your bulky computer, dial up on your squawky modem, type in some keywords, and get 10 blue links to websites that had those words. It seemed like magic (and it was way way faster than card catalogs and microfiche!).

The world has changed so much since then: billions of people have come online, the web has grown exponentially, and now you can ask any question on the powerful little device in your pocket. You can explore the world with the Knowledge Graph, ask questions aloud with voice search, and get info before you even need to ask with Google Now.

But 15 years on, we’re just getting started. We want to help you make more of each day. Here are a few of the latest features you can try out:

Comparisons and filters in the Knowledge Graph

We keep expanding features of the Knowledge Graph so it can answer more questions—even those that don’t have a simple answer. Let’s say you want to get your daughter excited about a visit to the Met. You can pull up your phone and say to Google: “Tell me about Impressionist artists.” You’ll see who the artists are, and you can dive in to learn more about each of them and explore their most famous works. If you want to switch to Abstract artists, you can do that really easily with our new filter tool:

Or let’s say you want to compare two things: How much saturated fat is in butter versus olive oil? Now you can simply tell Google: “Compare butter with olive oil.” Our new comparison tool gives you new insights by letting you compose your own answer:

You can try this for some other things you might be curious about, such as dog breeds (“compare pekingese vs. chihuahua”) or celestial objects (“compare earth vs. neptune”)—and we’ll keep adding more.

Get things done with Google across your devices

Having a “conversation” with Google should also be more natural. Ideally, you wouldn’t need to pull out your phone or tap buttons to use Google. We’re not quite there yet, but you can already do a lot with just your voice. In the next couple of weeks, you’ll be able to download a new version of the Google Search app on iPhone and iPad. With this update, you can get notifications across your devices. So if you tell your Nexus 7, “OK Google. Remind me to buy olive oil at Safeway,” when you walk into the store with your iPhone, you’ll get a reminder. We’ll also show you Google Now notifications so you’re not late to your cooking class.

A simpler, more unified design on mobile devices

You’ll also notice a new look and feel for Google Search and ads on your phones and tablets. It’s cleaner and simpler, optimized for touch, with results clustered on cards so you can focus on the answers you’re looking for.

We’ll keep improving Google Search so it does a little bit more of the hard work for you. This means giving you the best possible answers, making it easy to have a conversation and helping out before you even have to ask. Hopefully, we’ll save you a few minutes of hassle each day. So keep asking Google tougher questions—it keeps us on our toes! After all, we’re just getting started.

Posted by Amit Singhal, SVP, Google Search

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