Ch 32 · Lesson 25Spanish · Chapter 32 · Lesson 25 · Themed review
A la mesa, segundo servicio
Breakfast, lunch and dinner all have their own verb in Spanish - , , - which English has to say the long way round.
Practise this lesson
29-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
Every meal in Spanish has its own verb
English has no verb for having lunch. We borrow a noun and prop it up with have or eat. Spanish makes a verb out of each meal and uses it constantly.
- to breakfast. - to lunch. - to dine. is three words in English (I had breakfast) and one in Spanish.
One of them is stem-changing, which is the price: , , . and are regular and behave.
When the meals happen
The vocabulary is easy. The timetable is what actually catches people out.
In Spain, around two or three in the afternoon is the main meal of the day, and at nine or ten is lighter. A restaurant kitchen that is closed at seven in the evening is not being difficult; hardly anyone eats dinner then.
This is why means both food and lunch. The midday meal is the meal, so it took the general word.
Latin America varies enormously, and in much of it is more usual than for the same slot (Mexico is the big exception, where it is ).
pescado, pez, and the thing on the plate
swims. is served. The past participle of doing duty as a noun, exactly as is a roast.
The false friend on the menu
is soup. is soap. They are not related and they do not sound alike, and English speakers still swap them under pressure, because the shape of is so close to the English word for the wrong thing.
camarero
is a waiter in Spain. Mesero in Mexico, in Argentina, garzón in Chile. The regional variation is wider here than almost anywhere else in the language, because service vocabulary is intensely local.
Calling for one is ¡! or simply catching an eye. Shouting ¡! across a room comes across as brusque, whatever the phrasebooks of forty years ago suggested.