How to say could have in Spanish

There are tons of articles about many aspects of the Spanish language, but I rarely see anything written about how to say would have, could have and should have, so over the next couple of posts we're going to take a look at this.  We're going to start with learning how to say could have in Spanish.

HOW TO SAY COULD HAVE IN SPANISH

This isn't actually as hard as it sounds and I'm going to do my best to explain it to you without a bunch of grammar double talk.  Let's get started.  The first thing we need to do is talk about the things you need to know to be able to say could have in Spanish.

To express could have in Spanish, you need the verb poder.  Poder means "to be able to" which typically gets translated to some form of "can or could", generally speaking.

You also need the helping verb haber. The bonus here is you don't even have to conjugate it, you just use the verb as is.

You'll also need to be able to conjugate the past participle of a verb. All that means is you need to the "-ido" or "-ado" version of the verb.  With the exception of a few irregular verbs, "-ido" and "-ado" are the only things you need to form the past participle of a verb.  Here's a very nice page that's explains how to do that in plain English.

Forming Past Participles

Rather than go into a long-winded grammar explanation (which I'm not capable of anyway), I'm just going to share some very simple patterns with you and I think you'll find they'll make things easier then you thought.   Enough chit-chat, let's get to it.

The basic pattern goes like this:

Poder + Haber + Verb (Past participle)

Now let's expand on that.

I could have
Podría haber + verb (-ido, -ado)

You could have
Podrías haber  + verb  (-ido, -ado)

He/she could have
Podria haber  + verb  (-ido, -ado)

They could have
Podrian haber  + verb  (-ido, -ado)

We could have
Podríamos haber  + verb  (-ido, -ado)

While those are helpful, nothing beats a few good examples.

Podría haber dormido más tiempo
I could've slept longer

She/He could have danced all night
 Ella podría haber bailado toda la noche

Nos podríamos haber ido a la playa
We could have gone to the beach

Not so bad is it?

Even knowing all of the above, reading a few articles and even getting help from my then tutor, I just didn't quite get it, so don't feel bad if you find yourself in the same boat.  There were two things that helped me finally start to get a handle on things.

The first one is when I started listening to the lessons in the Learning Like Spanish Crazy Level 3 course.  The course dedicates 3 full lessons to this topic, specifically lessons 75, 76 and 77.   There are a total of 30 lessons, so you're going to learn a lot more than how to say could have, would have and should have in Spanish.  I'm going to write a review of the course shortly, but in the meantime if you need a little extra help with this and your Spanish in general, feel free to check out Learning Spanish Like Crazy Level 3.

The next thing I did was to start using these patterns in my conversations. That finally helped everything sink in, and for good.  Nothing burns this stuff into your memory better than using it in real life.

And that's it!  In the next post we'll look at how to say should have.

¡Ojála que te sirva!

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Learning Spanish Reflexive Verbs for Beginners

In my last post I wrote about Tips for learning the Spanish Subjunctive Tense.  Today we're going to take a look at reflexive verbs.

I remember having boatloads of problems with reflexive verbs in the beginning of my Spanish studies. I can't say I've mastered the subject, but I've certainly learned a lot. Today I'm going to try and put on my teachers hat and see if I can save you from going through the same drama I went through trying to get a handle on reflexive verbs.

If you read grammar books, the definition of a reflexive verb may read something like this:

In Spanish, a verb is considered reflexive if the subject (the performer of the action) and the object (the receiver of the action) are the same.

I don't know about you, but it's been a long time since I studied grammar in school, and I wasn't all that good at it then. So what does this mean in plain English? Let's start with some examples of reflexive actions in English:

I....

...take a shower

...comb my hair

...wash my hair

...put on my clothes

You wash your hair yourself.  You shower (or bathe) yourself.  You put on your clothes on yourself.

In simpler terms, an action is reflexive when you do something to yourself.

Now that we know what a reflexive action is, let's talk about how to express these ideas in Spanish.  And I'm going to try to do it without using a bunch of grammar double-talk.  We're going to work with one of the examples above....

I'm going to take a shower

The verbs we need to talk about cleaning ourselves up are bañar and bañarse.  You can identify which verb is reflexive because it has the se on the end.  But let's look at bañar first, which is the non-reflexive version.

Let's conjugate this to the first person, which is

Baño
I bathe

If this sounds like an incomplete sentence, it's because it is.  The obvious question here is "I bathe what?"

You could say "I bathe the dog every Saturday"

Baño al perro todos los sábados

Or "I bathe my kids every night"

Baño a mis niños todas las noches

The trick here is to recognize that you bañar everything except yourself.  When you want to talk about bathing yourself, you need bañarse, the reflexive form of bañar.

So how do we use reflexive verbs to talk about bathing ourselves?

First we need to conjugate the verb, which is exactly the same as it was with bañar...

Baño
I bathe

Now we just need to add the part that says we're bathing ourselves.  It's a lot easier than you think, you just add me.

Me baño
I bathe myself

That me is called a reflexive pronoun, but more about that in a minute.

If you've got your basic verb conjugations down pat, then conjugating reflexive verbs will be a breeze.

To say "you bathe yourself", just conjugate bañar to the "you" form and add te.

Te bañas
You bath yourself

Now let's go back to those reflexive pronouns.  So far I've mentioned the reflexive pronouns me and te, but there are a few more.

Me - I
Te - You
Se - He, She, It
Se - They
Nos - Us

There's nothing tricky about conjugating reflexive verbs as long as you keep in the mind the conjugations are the same  as the non-reflexive verb, you just have to add the appropriate reflexive pronoun.

Let's try a couple more.


¿Qué me pongo?   (Ponerse)
What should I put on (myself)?

Se lavan el pelo todos los días (Lavarse)
They wash their hair everyday

Nos peinamos (Peinarse)
We comb our hair

Let's see if you can get the last example by yourself.

I'm going to take a shower

This one might be a little tricky, because you don't actually have to conjugate the verb, but you still use the reflexive pronoun me, because you're talking about yourself.

Voy a bañarme
I'm going to take a shower

I know what you're thinking, "how did bañarse go from bathe to shower?".  Read my post on my sister blog, Bañarse, ducharse, la tina y la ducha.  The blog is named My Spanish Notes.  Check it out, I think you'll like it,

Hopefully all of that makes sense and gives you a good introduction to reflexive verbs.  But if you need a little extra help, and most people do (I certainly did) here are some great products you can use.

The Verbarrator

This is a great tool that will help you with learning all of your verb conjugations, not just the reflexive ones.  It's configurable, interactive and uses spoken, practical examples that blow away the old-fashioned, conventional methods of rote memorization.  Click here to read my detailed review of the Verbarrator  that includes actual product images so you can see what the tool has to offer.  Or you can go straight to the Verbarrator web page.

Learning Spanish Like Crazy Level I is a complete learning Spanish course for beginners that dedicates three entire 30 minute lessons to reflexive verbs, and contains 30 lessons in total.  The course uses a proven "listen and repeat" method that will burn this stuff into your brain.

I recommend both of these courses because I bought and used them myself and I can honestly say they were critical to the level of success I've managed to achieve so far in my 10 years of this Spanish speaking journey.

Espero que les sirva
I hope you guys find this useful

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Time to back away from the cookie jar? Introducing nutrition info in search

Figuring out how to make smart choices about some of our favorite foods can often be a cumbersome and daunting process. So we’re hoping we can make those choices a little bit easier: starting today you will be able to quickly and easily find extensive nutrition information for over 1,000 fruits, vegetables, meats and meals in search. From the basics of potatoes and carrots to more complex dishes like burritos and chow mein, you can simply ask, “How much protein is in a banana?” or “How many calories are in an avocado?” and get your answer right away. You'll hear the answer to your specific question, see relevant nutrition information under an expansion, and be able to switch to other related foods or serving sizes.

This new nutritional information builds on our work on the Knowledge Graph, which brings together all kinds of information from across the web that wasn't easily accessible. The graph helps us connect things that are related, even in cases when those foods have a completely different sounding name from what you asked. For example, when you ask for “summer squash carbs”, we include “zucchini” as a relevant food in the dropdown, because it is a type of summer squash.

Here are a few examples:

• Tempted by some popcorn at the movies? Ask “how many calories are in popcorn” and you’ll get your answer. [Hint: it's 31 calories per cup]
  
• Perplexed by a food label or recipe? Ask “what nutrients are in breadfruit?” or “is there sugar in granadilla?”
  
• Big on a high protein diet? Ask “how many carbs in corn?” or simply search for [corn] and you’ll see detailed nutrition info.
  

This feature will begin to launch today in English and will be rolling out in the US over the next ten days. Over time we’ll be adding more features, foods, and languages. So tap the microphone, give the feature a spin, and soon explore and discover the ins and outs of over 1,000 of your favorite foods.

Posted by Ilya Mezheritsky, Product Manager

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Getting started with structured data

When Google understands a website’s content in a structured way, we can present that content more accurately and more attractively in search. For example, our algorithms can enhance search results with “rich snippets” when we understand that a page contains an event, recipe, product, review, or similar. We can also feature a page’s data as part of answers in search from the Knowledge Graph or in Google Now cards, helping you find the right information at just the right time.

Starting today, webmasters have two new tools that make it simpler than ever before to provide the structured content of their web pages. The first is an expansion of Data Highlighter to eight types of structured data: events, products, local businesses, articles, software applications, movies, restaurants, and TV episodes. With Data Highlighter, webmasters don’t even need to change their site’s HTML. Instead, they can just point and click with their mouse to “tag” the key fields on a few sample pages of their site. Google learns the pattern of the fields and applies it to similar pages on the site, so all their information can be understood.

The second tool, Structured Data Markup Helper, is for web authors who are ready to take the next step and embed structured data directly within their pages, so their content is available to everyone. As with Data Highlighter, one simply points and clicks on a sample web page to indicate its key data fields. Structured Data Markup Helper then shows exactly what microdata annotations to add to the page’s HTML code. We hope this helps give HTML authors a running start with adding structured data to their sites, in turn making search results more meaningful.

To learn more, please see our post on the Webmaster Central blog!

Posted by Justin Boyan, Product Manager

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Finding your photos more easily with Google Search

Your photos represent some of your most important memories and life events, yet they are increasingly difficult to manage as you build up your photo library, accumulate new devices and make new friends. In many cases, searching for your photos can be challenging because the information you’re looking for is visual.

Starting today, you’ll be able to find your photos more easily and connect with the friends, places and events in your Google+ photos. For example, now you can search for your friend’s wedding photos or pictures from a concert you attended recently. To make computers do the hard work for you, we’ve also begun using computer vision and machine learning to help recognize more general concepts in your photos such as sunsets, food and flowers.

Try it out on Google.com by signing in and searching for [my photos] or [my photos from new york last year] or [matt’s photos of food]. You can also try out this feature on Google+ Photos.

Update (4:45 p.m. PST): To clarify, searching for [my photos] and similar terms is currently available in English on Google.com when you are signed in to your Google+ enabled Google Account.

Posted by Matthew Kulick, Product Manager

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A multi-screen and conversational search experience

Search has always been about giving you the best answers quickly, regardless of what device you use. At Google I/O today, we gave an update on where we are in building the search engine of the future--a search engine that can answer your questions, have a conversation with you, and even give you useful things without you ever having to ask.

A conversation with search -- across your devices

People communicate with each other by conversation, not by typing keywords -- and we’ve been hard at work to make Google understand and answer your questions more like people do. Already, you can tap a mic, talk to Google in a more natural way and get responses spoken back to you on Android, iPhone, and iPad devices.

Today, we previewed what this conversational experience will look like in Chrome on your desktops and laptops. Soon, you’ll be able to just say, hands-free, “OK Google, will it be sunny in Santa Cruz this weekend?” and get a spoken answer. Then, you’ll be able to continue the conversation and just follow up with “how far is it from here?” if you care about the drive or “how about Monterey?” if you want to check weather somewhere else, and get Google to tell you the answer.

Better answers - Improvements to the Knowledge Graph

We announced the Knowledge Graph -- our map of real-world people, places and things -- less than a year ago and since then have been adding more depth. We’ve also expanded it to make search more intelligent in other languages. And starting today, you’ll get richer answers from the Knowledge Graph if you speak Polish, Turkish, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese.

You’ll also get smarter answers to questions like “what’s the population of Canada?” Not only will Google answer that question, but you also get an answer to the next few follow-up questions people often ask. In a single card, you’ll see how Canada’s population changed over time -- and a comparison with California and Australia.

Google Now: a new take on reminders, and new cards

Google Now is about providing you with just the right information at just the right time. With the new reminders in Now, not only can you save things to remember later, but you can actually pick a time or place to trigger those reminders, so they pop up at just the right time. Because a note to buy milk, paper towels and food for the dog, is a lot more helpful when you’re actually at the grocery store. Or if you’re about to miss the last train home, Google Now can remind you that you better leave. And if you’re interested in an upcoming book or there’s a new album you’re excited to listen to, Google Now will shoot you a reminder when it comes out, and even provide a recommendation. And the best part is, you can create some of these reminders with just your voice.

 

With just the tap of a mic or flick of a finger, millions of people across the world can easily tap into the entire world’s knowledge and find what they need to make their lives better, or just have their day run a little smoother. That’s why we’re so excited about the new search experience we’re building at Google and it will change how we experience life.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Senior Vice President

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More than 70 of the world’s languages in the blink of an eye

If you took a quick snapshot of content available on the web, you might think that everyone around the world spoke English, Chinese, French or Spanish. But in fact, millions of people around the world speak an incredible array of languages that currently have a small presence across the web.

Google Translate helps bridge the divide between the content available online and people’s ability to access that information. Starting today, you can translate another five languages using Google, which combined are spoken by more than 183 million people around the globe:

• Bosnian is an official language in Bosnia and Herzegovina that’s also spoken in regions of neighboring countries and by diaspora communities around the world.
• Cebuano is one of the languages spoken in the Philippines, predominantly in the middle (Visayas) and southern (Mindanao) regions of the nation.
• You can hear the Hmong language spoken in many countries across the world, including China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and throughout the United States.
• Javanese is the second most-spoken language in Indonesia (behind Indonesian), with 83 million native speakers.
• Marathi is spoken in India and has 73 million native speakers. Google Translate already supports several other Indian languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
  
  
  

With the exception of Bosnian, these new languages are “alpha,” meaning while the quality isn’t perfect, we will continue to test and improve them over time.

You can access Translate on the web at https://translate.google.com, on your Android or iOS device, or via Chrome and in Gmail. We are excited to reach the 70+ language milestone, and we look forward to continuing to add more languages.

Bosnian: Google Prevodilac sada podržava više od 70 jezika!

Cebuano: Google sa Translate misuporta na karon sa kapin sa 70 ka mga!

Hmong: Google Translate nim no txhawb nqa tshaj li 70 hom lus!

Javanese: Google Translate saiki ndhukung luwih saka 70 basa!

Marathi: Google भाषांतर आता 70 पेक्षा जास्त भाषांचे समर्थन करते!

Posted by Sveta Kelman, Program Manager, Google Translate

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