Ch 8 · Lesson 23Spanish · Chapter 8 · Lesson 23 · Themed review
El cuerpo y la salud
Hand, head and heart, and enough to tell a doctor what hurts. Careful with : the face, but also expensive.
Practise this lesson
16-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
In Spanish, things hurt you rather than you hurting
You do not have a headache in Spanish. The head hurts you.
Me . The head is the subject, you are the object, and the verb agrees with the body part rather than with you. Two things hurt and the verb goes plural: me pies.
This is all over again, and it is worth noticing that the two hardest constructions for an English speaker are the same construction.
The article, not the possessive
Me , not . Spanish uses the definite article for body parts almost everywhere, because the me has already established whose head it is. Saying is not wrong exactly, but it sounds like you are distinguishing your head from somebody else's, which is rarely the point.
Same with washing, dressing and moving: me , not . English needs the possessive because it has nothing else. Spanish has already told you.
Three ways to be unwell
is to be ill right now. is rare and means something closer to being an invalid. also means ill, especially in Spain, and means to be a bad person, or bad at something, so the ser/estar split is doing serious work here. The third, and the gentlest, is me : I feel unwell.
For the doctor, both and doctor are used. is the profession, doctor is the title and the form of address. In Spain you go to and say , doctor; in much of Latin America doctor is just as usual.
cara
is the face. is expensive, and the feminine is identical to the noun. is she or it is expensive, is the face, and ¡ ! is what a nerve, the face doing figurative work.
Context sorts it out every time. It is still worth knowing why the sentence briefly looked strange.