Lesson Nine: Saber, si and long sentences
In this lesson you'll start to see how you can already know how to put together long and complex sentences'
Saber - to know
The Spanish verb for "to know" is 'Saber'
A good hook to remember this is the English word "Savvy" which refers to real life knowledge - "He's got savvy".
Here we can also see that cross over with the 'v' and the 'b'. 'v' in Spanish is pronounced as a soft 'b' but in this case the 'v' from the English word Savvy has actually been replaced by a real 'b' to create ther verb 'Saber'.
This is no coincidence, both the Spanish verb and the English word have their same roots in Latin.
 Spanish |  English |
|---|---|
| Quiero saber | I want to know |
| No quiero saber | I don't want to know |
| Quiere saber | He/She wants to know |
| No quiere saber | He/She doesn't want to know |
| Por qué no quiere saber | Why doesn't He/She want to know |
Longer sentences
We now actually have everything we need to make some pretty long sentences in Spanish. The trick is to break any sentence down into blocks so if we want to say "I want to know why he doesn't want to know"
- Quiero saber - I want to know
- por quér - why
- no quiere saber - he doesn't want to know
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Quiero saber por qué no quiere saber | I want to know why he doesn't want to know |
Now lets introduce a small but useful word in here - if ... and at the same time learn 'yes'
- 'Si' - if
- 'Sí' - yes
The are both pronounced the same way, the only difference is that accent on the 'i' for Sí.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Quiero saber si quiere saber | I want to know if you (formal) want to know |
| Quiero saber si quiere saber | I want to know if he/she wants to know |
So let's try another long sentence - "I want to know if he wants to invite me"
- Quiero saber - I want to know
- si quiere - if he wants
- invitarme - to invite me
Let's introduce another verb. The English is imagine so if you use the Thinking Method you find the 'tion' version, take off the 'tion', add an 'r' and we get Imaginar (to imagine).
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| No quiero imaginarlo | I don't want to imagine it |
I don't know why this verb was introduced here but hey, there you have it.
Right - let's build a longer sentence - "I want to know if she wants to come to the house to visit me"
- Quiero saber - I want to know
- si quiere - if she wants
- venir - to come
- a la casa - to the house
- a visitarme - to visitar me
Note here the 'a' before 'visitarme'. That's because venir is a verb of movement so we need the 'a' after it but only once we have the object (the house) out the way.
And another - "I want to know why she doesn't want to come to the house to visit me".
- Quiero saber - I want to know
- por qué no quiere - why she doesn't want
- venir - to come
- a la casa - to the house
- a visitarme - to visitar me
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Quiero saber por qué no quiere venir a la casa a visitarme | I want to know why she doesn't want to come to the house to visit me |
So try breaking these down yourself:.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Voy a invitarlo pero no voy a invitarlo ahora | I'm going to invite him but I'm not going to invite him now |
| Quiero iniciarlo ahora | I want to start it now |
| Quiere iniciarlo ahora | He/She wants to start it now |
| Por qué no quiere informarme | Why doesn't he/she want to inform me |
It's worth pointing out here that one of the tricks to learning Spanish is substitution - finding a way to express yourself by finding alternative words in English. So we might want to say "Why doesn't he want to let me know" but we don't know the Spanish for "let me know". A bit of time thinking and you will remember an alternative "inform" which as a 'tion' version so you can now express yourself and be perfectly understood.
The next sentence uses "justify" but I'll leave it to you to find the Spanish verb! Just listen carefully to the pronounciation because, as we covered earlier, sounds like 'j' in 'jug' in English are changed in Spanish so a sound I can't type!
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| No intento justificarme | I'm not trying to justify myself |
| No intento justificarme pero quiero explicarte algo | I'm not trying to justify myself but I want to explain something to you |
You've probably spotted it, 'explicar' is not following the usual rules for a 'tion' word. If it did it would be 'explanar'. But as we said general rules are useful but there are always exceptions and this is one of them.
There is actually a sort of version that exists in English - "inexplicable" (unexplainable) - which is the same in Spanish ...
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| Inexplicable | Inexplicable |
We also have a different word order for the first time. In Spanish we are saying "explain to you something (explicarte algo)" while in English we say "explain something to you".
This will happen more and more and sometimes its worth practicing 'Spanglish' - saying the Spanish sentence in English using the Spanish word order to help it sink in.
Lesson Ten: Spanish verbs, the future and more on Tener (to have)