Published Monthly

Volume I Number VI                                                                              June  2007

¡Hola! y ¿Cómo estás? 

“To Be or Not to Be” Part III

 Yes Friends (Sí Amigos), that still is the question! Or, ¡eso todavía es la pregunta!

  We’ve covered “ser”, “estar” and “tener”. I also mentioned “hacer” and “haber”, which we’ll try and cover in this edition. Now, you’re probably thinkin’  “to H-E- double hockey sticks” with this one. It’s all too complicated! But I gotta’ tell ya', just keep going and it’ll all come clear in the end. Some of this stuff is pretty similar to what you already know and have been learnin’ in the other newsletters.

Take for example :

Hace frío.                   It is cold.

Hace calor.                It is hot.

Hace viento.              It is windy.

 It’s all about the weather, so you don’t have to learn a bunch of tenses, it’s all impersonal 3^rd person formal. And it’s very similar to “tener” 3^rd person formal:

Tiene frio.                  He (or she, or it, as in “the dog”) is cold.

Tiene calor.               He (or she, or it, as in “the gerbil”)  is hot.

 Please note that “breaking wind” is not the same as “having wind”, therefore you can’t say “Tiene viento”. I say that because “tener” is usually translated as “to have”. The phrase you want in that case is “tirar un peo” as in “Daniel está tirando peos”, or “Daniel is farting.”

Hacer is usually translated as “to do or to make”. So literally, some great impersonal “It” (who I choose to call God, but I dunno if this is how it’s thought of or not) “makes wind”, and we say “it’s windy” or “hace viento”.

 You can also say:

Hace buen tiempo.           The weather is nice.

Hace mal tiempo.             The weather is bad.

Hace sol.                              It’s sunny.

Anyway, it’s all about the weather!

Ahora, one last way (that I can think of, anyway) to say “it is” is the word “hay”. “Hay” (which I think is a form of the verb “haber”) is usually translated  to mean “there is or there are”. But when it is put with the weather it’s like this:

 Hay nubes.                It’s cloudy.                 (Literally, there are

Hay niebla.                 It’s foggy.                    (Literally, there is fog.)

Hay can also be used for other things:

¿Cuántos tomates hay?                               How many tomatoes are there? 

Hay veinte tomates en el jardín.             There are 20 tomatoes in the garden.

 So, there you are, amigos,  even if it ain’t exactly Shakespeare (can you even imagine trying to read Shakespeare in Spanish? I have trouble enough with it in English, not to mention Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Spanish or English!) you now know more ways than you thought possible “to be or not to be”. And in Spanish too!

I hope it helps. Remember, the best way to learn is to practice. Say it aloud.

Talk to the mirror. Talk to the dog. But talk!

 Espero que esto les ayuda. Acuérdanse que la mejor manera para

 aprender es practicar. Dígalo en voz alta. Habla al espejo. Habla al

perro. ¡Pero habla!

 ¡Gracias, adiós, y hasta luego!

 Chao for now!    Miau...miao...

¡Gracias!

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Sherri Brownkatz

Certified Teacher

(863) 533-9161 (home)

(813) 763-6333 (cell)

SherriBrownkatz@Verizon.net

www.Brownkatz.com