El blog de Visual Spanish
Juanes, born Juan Estebán Aristizábal Vásquez (¡what a name!) is a Colombian guitarist, singer, songwriter and certified heart-throb. One of Latin America's most influential artists of the 21st Century, we can use his song Gotas de agua dulce to learn about some natural elements.
Some definitions:
Gotas - Drops
Agua - Water
Rayo de sol - Ray of sun
Luz - Light
Sombra - Shade
In this song, Juanes uses various elements figuratively to express his #Deep emotions and make romantic metaphors. When we contextualize the definitions, it becomes a lot easier to understand their significance.
Lo que yo siento por ti es amor
Ganas que me hacen útil el corazón
droga que me hace inmune ante el dolor
gotas de agua dulce rayo de sol.
Llévame, de ser preciso, por la semblanza de tu sombra
yo sé que tu prendes la luz y en mi vida te asomas
como las blancas palomas, cuando la plaza se toman
con vuelo inmortal.
...
In Spanish, verb to laugh, reírse, can get confusing. Reír is a reflexive verb, meaning its used with a reflexive pronoun. Considering that río, the word for river, is the same as the yo conjugation of reír, it can be easy to misuse the two.
Since its easy to confuse the different forms of rio, it's important to have these conjugations down:
Yo me río
Tu te ríes
El se ríe
Nosotros nos reímos
Vosotros os reís
Ellos se ríen
Keep practicing and know that you know your stuff by using the phrase:
Yo me río por que ella se cayo en el río.
¡Hola, hola!
Ever realize that both pez and pescado mean fish in Spanish? Well they're actually a little different. We're here to clear it up
Pez is an animal, or the fish that you catch by completing the verb pescar. Once a fish has been caught however, it has been pescado (which is the the past participle of pescar) and becomes un pescado (the name for the fish). Therefore, the pez that was nadando or swimming turns into a pescado en tu plato or fish on your plate.
Here are a couple more examples:
Los peces estaban nadando.
Translation: The fish were swimming.
El pescado estaba delicioso.
Translation: The fish was delicious.
Vimos muchos peces lindos desde el barco. Aunque nos haya dado pena, igual terminamos cenando pescado en el puerto.
Translation: We saw a lot of fish from the boat. Even though we felt bad, we ended up eating fish for dinner...
In Spanish you can say 'to drink' with two verbs - beber and tomar.
There are, nonetheless, differences.
Today, we're paying tribute to the great Pau Donés from the Spanish band Jarabe de Palo and using their song agua to clear things up
Beber can be used to express the act of drinking liquid or fluid (water, beer, wine, juice, coffee etc.) Tomar however, in addition to drinks, can also be used for when eating a solid food (ice cream, cake, a snack).
In Agua, Pau Donés sings:
Cuando uno tiene sed
Pero el agua no está cerca
Cuando uno quiere beber
Pero el agua no está cerca
Translation
When one is thirsty
But the water isn't near
When one wants to drink
In this case, he could have also used the verb tomar, since it works for both liquids and solids. So if Pau would have said: Cuando uno quiere tomar it also would have been grammatically correct.
If you're ever in doubt, you can...