Tengo ... años

After asking the question, we should reply it!

Tengo (I have)... años (years) (click on the link for sound)

This is also simple, isn't it? Let's learn some grammar here. Do you notice 'Tengo' and 'Tienes' look similar? They mean the same too. Actually they are the variation of the same word.

I have is 'Tengo'.
You have is 'Tienes'

So verbs actually changes when the subject change, just like in English you add 's' when the subject is he/she/it. But Spanish is way more complicated than that, as we will see there will be more variations.

Well, I am 36 this year, but how do I say that in Spanish?

Disclaimer

¿Cuántos años tienes?

How old are you?

¿Cuántos (How many) años (years) tienes (you have)? (click on the link for sound)

If you ask this 'literally' in Chinese of English, this would be really impolite. It is would be asking how many more years you are going to live, but this is Spanish, this is simply asking how old are you.

Note the inverted question mark at the beginning of the question. It is an open question mark, it marks the starting of a question.

Disclaimer

Soy de ...

After asking people where do they come from, should you go answer it?

Soy ([I] am) de (from) ... (click on the link for sound)

This one is easy, but where do you come from?

Disclaimer

De dónde eres?

Where do you from, a typical question that one would ask after meeting a new friend

De (of) dónde (where) eres ([you] are)? (click on the link for sound)

Another strange way of ordering words. Why do we put the preposition 'of' as the first word in the sentence? I don't know, that's the way it is. Let's ask again.

The reply was simple, preposition cannot end a sentence, so we have to put them in front.

Disclaimer

Me llamo ...

After asking what is the other people's name, you would probably here this reply

Me (I) llamo  (call myself) ... (click on the link for sound)

With the help of the friend in discussion forum, this is trivial to understand now. An interesting question here is why we use Me (accusative pronoun) instead of Yo (personal pronoun). A little Googling solved the problem.

Accusative pronoun means it is being acted on.

In English, it would be wrong to say "Me called", but it is fine to say "call me", it is that second "me" thing that is the "Me" in our Spanish sentence, but in Spanish it is put in front.

Same reason applies to the previous post that we used "te" instead of "tú".

Edit: forget about the Accusative pronoun piece, that is wrong. It is a reflexive pronoun, and advanced concept that is too early to mention here yet, see the llamo becomes (call myself)? That's the reflexive part of the word.

Disclaimer

Cómo te llamas?

So you make new friends, you need to ask about his/her name, wouldn't you?

Cómo (How) te (You) llamas (Name call youself)? (click on the link for sound)

Well ... um ... I don't really understand this。Why do we use (How, Cómo) to ask this question which should have been asked using (What, Qué)。

People told me that I should just memorize this. But this is just really strange ...

Edit: After writing this I decided to ask this question in the discussion group. Here is the answer.

llamas actually means (called) , so a more literal translation of the sentence is "How is you called", of course, asking it like this is rather awkward in English, I guess, similarly, asking the literal translation of "What is your name" in Spanish (as in Qué es tu nombre) would probably be equally awkward there.

Disclaimer

Adiós, hasta pronto

Goodbye, see you soon ... well this is not the last blog. I just want to tell you how to say good bye in Spanish,

Adiós  means good bye，hasta  means until，pronto soon (click on the link for sound)

So we say (good bye) (until) (soon), which basically means see you soon.

This is the first time we see an accent mark。Notice the ó on Adiós has a special mark。That is called an accent mark, let's take a good look at it。

ó

A word with exactly the same letters with different accent marks can means something different, so one must also remember the accent marks when remember the spelling!

Disclaimer