Ch 13 · Lesson 28Spanish · Chapter 13 · Lesson 28 · Themed review
Los sentimientos
Love, fear and everything between. is both to want and to love, which tells you something about Spanish.
Practise this lesson
15-word session
A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.
Worth knowing
querer means to want and to love, which tells you something
means to want. It also means to love. is the ordinary, everyday I love you, said to partners, parents, children and close friends.
is the stronger word, and it is rarer than English love by a long way. In Spain belongs to romantic love and to song lyrics; in much of Latin America it is also said to parents and children. Said to a friend it is either a joke or a declaration, and both are awkward.
The safe rule: if English would say I love you and mean it warmly rather than dramatically, Spanish says .
The verbs that put you second
behaves like : me is literally it enchants me. So does : me is it worries me, with the thing doing the worrying as the subject.
Then Spanish offers the reflexive versions, and they mean something subtly different. Me is the exam worries me. Me is I worry about the exam. The first happens to you; the second is something you do. English has to say the whole thing out loud to make that distinction.
esperar is three verbs at once
is to wait, to hope and to expect. is I am waiting for you. is I hope so. is I hope he comes, and takes the subjunctive.
There is no reliable way to tell them apart except context, and Spanish speakers do not experience it as ambiguous at all.
miedo is a thing you have
, to have fear. Not to be afraid. This is the same pattern as and , and it is one of the most reliable structures in the language: Spanish puts a surprising number of internal states inside .
is the verb, and it is more formal and much less common. Use and you will sound like a person rather than a subtitle.