Lesson 25: Cocinar, Quedar and telling the time
Introducing two more useful verbs. Cocinar, 'to cook' and Quedar, 'to stay'. Also how to say at what time something happened or will happen.
So far we've seen that certain words to explain a person can have multiple meanings:
- 'me' - me, to me, myself
- 'te' - you, to you, yourself
- 'nos' - us, to us, ourselves
So we can't always do literal translations until we know the context in which they are being used.
It also means that we don't always need a lot of the little words we use in English like 'to' and 'about'.
 Spanish |  English |
|---|---|
| Me habla | He's speaking to me |
| Me hablan | They're speaking to me |
| Me lo hablan | They're speaking to me about it |
And once again we can see this "melody" rule as a great way to remember the order of 'me' and 'lo'.
Talking this way we also lose the need for words like "for" and "from" in many situations.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Me lo compra | He is buying it for me |
| Te lo compro | I buy it for you |
For me this was a struggle because English speakers are used to hearing the verb first and so for a while you have to start with the verb and then think about what goes before it but with practice it becomes more natural.
Question forms are much easier than in English because it is just the same phrase but pronounced like a question:
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ¿Te lo compro? | Shall I buy it for you |
Now the downside to losing 'for' and 'from' is that these sentences could actually be taken two ways. 'Te lo compro>' can also mean "Shall I buy it from you?" so in Spanish general context - what is going on at the time - is very important.
Hacer recap
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ¿Quieres hacerlo? | Do you want to do it? |
And remember take away the question mark and you have "You want to do it".
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ¿Me lo quieres hacer? | Do you want to do it for me? |
| ¿Quieres hacer me lo? | Do you want to do it for me? |
Just pointing out again that these small words can be flexible in their placement and you will hear them used both ways.
Cocina and Cocinar
This is "kitchen" in Spanish and as the word ends with an 'a' - but not with an 'ma' - you can work out the gender of the word!
From this we get the verb "to cook" - 'Cocinar'.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| La cocina | The kitchen |
| Cocinar | To cook |
These words both come from the same root as the English "Cook" because they both originated from "concoction'.
Now if we know we have an 'ar' verb we can work out all the various forms for I/we/you/she/he/it/they using the rules laid out in earlier lessons.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Cocino | I cook |
| Cocina | He cooks |
| Cocinas | You (informal) cook |
| Cocinan | They/you guys cook |
| Cocinamos | We cook |
So lets see this verb in other ways using other verbs and words we already know:
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ¿Puedes cocinar? | Can you cook? |
| ¿Me puedes cocinar algo? | Can you cook something for me? |
| He cocinado | I have cooked |
Saying what time things happened
In English using "have" as a way to talk about the past tense is used but not as much as in Spanish. In English we are more likely to say "I cooked" than "I have cooked" while in Spanish the latter is the most common.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| He cocinado a las seis | I cooked at 6 o'clock |
| Hemos cocinado a las ocho | We cooked at 8 o'clock |
And here we see the two different, but equally odd ways of expressing a time.
- 6 o'clock - is a shortening for 6 of the clock.
- a las seis - is a shortening of 'a las seis horas' - "at the six hours"
We see the Spanish version a little in English when we sat "at eighteen hundred hours".
Quedar - to remain
'Quedar' actually has many meanings including "to be left over" but one of the most common forms is "to remain".
Now as with all new words we need to consider if this is one of those verbs that you can "do to yourself" as in - "to sit" ... "sit yourself down" - "to get up" ... "get yourself up".
We may not always have a direct translation for it in English but if it is something you are doing to yourself then it is one of the reflexive verbs so we don't say "I stay", we say "I remain myself".
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Me quedo | I stay |
| Nos quedamos | We're staying |
| Nos quedamos hasta las nueve | We're staying until 9 o'clock |
| Te quedas | You stay |
| Te quedas aquí | You're staying here |
| ¿Te quedas aquí? | Are you staying here? |
As we'ev covered before in every day language we don't use the actual word for 'You', 'I', etc. unless we want to make a real point about it.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Yo me quedo | I am staying |
| Nosotros nos quedamos | We are staying |