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Mostrando entradas de marzo, 2021

¿Cómo vivimos y hablamos la Semana Santa? / How we live and talk Holly Week? - 5 minutos de español (5 minutes of Spanish). English & Spanish version + Podcast

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How are you? Good morning, good afternoon or good evening depending on where you are or what time you are listening to us. In these five minutes of Spanish in the middle of the week we are going to talk about how people live and talk about Semana Santa . 2021, as we all know, is not a typical year like 2020. But normally Semana Santa i s a time when there are many Christian celebrations remembering the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Anyway, despite the fact that not all Latin Americans are practitioners of a religion, Holy Week is celebrated and in general the name of religious origin is maintained. It coincides with school vacations and is two weeks in the case of Mexico. Yes, parties, food and tourism. But this year is different for the reasons already known. Let's remember some typical words of this time of the year: Sacrificio- es un cognado, los creyentes se refieren al sacrificio de Jesús en la cruz. / The belivers talk about sacrifice of Jesus on the cr

Una Semana Santa diferente / A different Holy Week: ¡Una buena semana para estudiar español! / A good week for studying Spanish!

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  La Semana Santa se celebra en toda América Latina y especialmente en México. Es una de las fiestas que heredamos de la tradición católica y que, en el caso mexicano, se unió con antiquísimas tradiciones de diferentes grupos étnicos del país. El chocolate y los huevos de pascua, mmm Comienza el domingo de Ramos y se celebra toda la semana, especialmente el jueves y viernes Santo, que es el día de la Pasión de Cristo. Jueves y viernes son feriados, los Bancos, por ejemplo,  cierran. Vacaciones   Pero en este 2021 (al igual que en el 2020) las cosas son muy diferentes, ya sabemos por qué. De hecho, desde el Vaticano se aconsejó hacer las ceremonias de manera virtual en los países en los que sufrimos los achaques de la pandemia. Así que este año nada de procesiones ni celebraciones, ni rituales. Todo virtual y cada uno en su interior. Pero no es una fiesta solamente religiosa:   En México hay vacaciones escolares durante dos semanas, en otros países de América Latina solo se

Ahorrar y gastar - 5 minutos de español /To save and to spend. 5 minutes of Spanish.(English & Spanish version). Podcast

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English version   How are you? Good morning, good afternoon or good evening depending on where you are or what time you are listening to us. Thank you very much for being with us week after week listening to these 5 minutes of Spanish. Last Wednesday we commented that the verb to save in English is translated as guardar, salvar or ahorrar, depending on the intention of the speaker. We already talked about guardar and salvar if you want to listen to it again we leave you here the link to the podcast on our blog. Today we are going to focus on ahorrar. Escucha / listen It is a regular verb and can also be used as a reflexive (ahorrarse). For the Spanish student the difficulty is the pronunciation because it has a hache (h) between the a and the o, which is not pronounced and then the double erre that for some is difficult to pronounce: ahorro. The same sound as rock, perro, carro, Roma. Let's say it without fear: ahorro It is a word that is used a lot, I remember my gr

¿Salvar o guardar? 5 minutos de español / 5 minutes of Spanish: ¿To save or to save? English & Spanish version + Podcast

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  How are you? Good morning, good afternoon or good evening depending on where you are or what time you are listening to us. In these 5 minutes of Spanish in the middle of the week we are going to talk about 3 verbs: salvar, guardar and ahorrar. The translation of these verbs is: to save in all 3 cases. Hoy vamos a comentar algunos usos de guardar y salvar, y el próximo miércoles veremos ahorrar. Today we are going to comment on some uses of guardar and salvar, and next Wednesday we will see ahorrar. Gracias por estar ahí semana tras semana y después de escucharnos por favor, guarda el audio, ¡no lo borres!, ¡escúchalo nuevamente y compártelo! Thank you for being there week after week and after listening to us please save the audio, don't delete it, listen to it again and share it! Let's see more examples of “guardar”. Cuando escribes siempre es muy bueno guardar el archivo pues, si no lo haces puedes perder todo el trabajo. When you write it is always very good to save the fil

5 minutos de español / 5 minutes of Spanish: ¿Desear o deber?

  How are you? Good morning, good afternoon or good evening depending on where you are or what time you are listening to us.   Thank you very much for being here week after week practicing 5 minutes with us.   In these 5 minutes of Spanish in the middle of the week we are going to review four regular verbs and one irregular verb that combined with infinitives form sentences with new meanings.   It's very practical, isn't it?   Para expresar que terminé de hacer algo recién, usamos acabar de. To express I have just finished something, we use “acabar de”   Acabo de                   I just finished Acabas de                 You just finished Acaba de                   You just finished; he or she just finished Acabamos de            We just finished Acaban de                 T hey just finished   Acabo de terminar mi tarea, ¡qué suerte!            I´ ve just finished my homework, lucky me! Acaba de llegar mi suegra a casa.                    My