How to Learn Colombian Spanish - Learn Spanish with Andrew

Learn Colombian Spanish #4: “Su merced”

Andrew — Sun, 20 May 2018 20:42:07 +0000

This one isn’t as common as the others, but it’s still used in certain areas and is featured here mainly because I think it’s funny and interesting. “Su merced” literally means “your mercy”, sort of the Spanish equivalent of the antiquated form of address in English of “your grace”. “Merced” means “mercy”, “su” in this context means “your”. “Su” is the formal, 2nd person possessive, what you would use to say “your” when speaking to someone you would refer to as “usted”: “su merced” = “la merced de usted”. Variations of this include “su mercé” and “vuestra merced” (very uncommon).

It’s an especially polite form of address having evolved over the years to be used in the way English speakers might use “sir” and “ma’am/madam”. It sounds very funny to most native Spanish speakers (see below video of a Panamanian newscaster talking about having heard it on a recent trip to Colombia) and, outside of the few localities in which it is still in common use, would absolutely seem overly formal (in other words, don’t use it, but now you know what it is on the off chance you hear it).

It’s not in particularly common use anymore outside of a few, more rural departments of Colombia (particularly the less-populated areas of Cundinamarca and Boyacá). If your Spanish is decent there’s a wiki article specifically on the dialect of Spanish spoken there. I’ve spoken with people from Bogota about this who have told me their grandparents would use these terms as well, so even in cities like Bogota you may occasionally hear it used by more elderly people.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free. It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average. It's available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

Cheers,
Andrew

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Learn Colombian Spanish #3: Everyone is “a la orden”

Andrew — Wed, 16 May 2018 18:32:46 +0000

It literally means “at the order” but translates to something more like “at your service”, it’s what servers in restaurants or people selling things on the street say to let you know they’re ready to receive your order.

I suspect this isn’t exclusive to Colombia but I don’t recall hearing it in Spain and it is very common here – I’m trying to give you guys colloquial Spanish that’s common here, that will prove useful to you if you visit, and that you probably wouldn’t have learned otherwise (textbooks, courses, Duolingo, etc.).

When I was in Cartagena I heard this all the time. There would be employees for every restaurant, bar, and cafe standing out in front of them with menus trying to entice people to come in, and they would frequently use this phrase to indicate they were open for business. The street vendors selling everything from straw hats to cigarettes and candy to beer would use this phrase with the same intention.

In Bogota and Medellin, thankfully, the vendors are nowhere near as aggressive (one of the reasons I didn’t like Cartagena, it’s very touristy), so this phrase is only heard once you’ve indicated you want to engage in some sort of business with someone, e.g. you’ve just sat down at a restaurant and a waiter hands you a menu and says “a la orden”, indicating that they’ll take your order whenever you’re ready (you will likely have to flag them down when you are ready, they don’t check on you occasionally like servers in the states do).

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

Cheers,
Andrew

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Learn Colombian Spanish #2: “Qué pena” Does Not Mean “What a shame”…Like in Every Other Country

Andrew — Tue, 15 May 2018 16:36:03 +0000

Instead it’s a very polite way of saying “I’m sorry”, frequently heard from service workers like waiters when something goes wrong for the customer. I’ve had a waiter say it when I dropped my own money and he picked it up for me, just the other day when a waitress forgot half of my order and left me waiting twenty minutes for it many a “qué pena” was heard (they made it right, even got some free brownies out of the mix).

A common variation of this is “qué pena contigo/con usted”, literally meaning something like “what a shame with you”, but it implies culpability for said shame on the speaker. Everywhere else, as best I know, it just means “what a shame” – if you search the phrase on Reverso Contexto those are the only results you get except for the very last one (that means least frequent in the results) where it shows “I’m sorry”. So if you actually wanted to say “what a shame” in Colombia you’d probably go with either “qué lástima” or “qué vergüenza”.

Check out the below video (it’s in Spanish, auto-generated subtitles are available and decently accurate) where a Panamanian television presenter talks about the Colombian phrases and words that stood out to her when she recently visited the country (it’s in Spanish, auto-generated subtitles are available and decently accurate). The first one she mentions is “qué pena” but the whole video is worth a watch.

If anyone’s planning on going to Colombia shoot me an email (andrew -at- traceylanguages -dot- com), I’m just wrapping up three months here and would be happy to answer any questions you have.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

It's currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

Cheers,
Andrew

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Learn Colombian Spanish #1: Pronunciation of “y” and “ll”

Andrew — Sun, 13 May 2018 20:30:10 +0000

Soft “j”, that’s how.

Colombians pronounce the double-L and y as a soft j sound, like the j in “jay”, e.g. “llegar” = “jay-gar”, “yo” = “joe”, etc.

This is in contrast with the traditional pronunciation of those two sounds that you’ll hear in Spain as well as some other countries where they’re both pronounced with a y sound, e.g. “yo” is pronounced the same way it would be in English, “llegar” is pronounced “yay-gar”, etc.

And then there’s Argentina…Che.

They pronounce those two sounds as either (depending on region) a “ch” or a “sh” sound, e.g. “llegar” is pronounced “chay-gar” or “shay-gar”, “yo” is pronounced either “cho” or “show”.

Here’s a great video (short, ~1min) of two men, one from Spain and the other from Argentina, demonstrating the differences in their pronunciation.

And here’s an audio recording of a Colombian saying “pollo” (which means “chicken”). Sorry, I couldn’t find a video of Colombians demonstrating this particular aspect of their dialect.

I hope that was interesting, there will be more to come in this series. I’m just wrapping up my trip to Colombia (leaving for Chile in a little more than a week) so I’ve got plenty of material to write about, also… If you thought the above was at all useful and you want to learn (or are learning) Spanish, please give me a chance and read what I have to say about my book below! Thank you so much for checking out my blog and I hope you’ve enjoyed my writing.

I learned to speak conversational Spanish in six months using TV shows, movies, and even comics: I then wrote a book on how you can, too

I have a whole method and a book I wrote about it called The Telenovela Method where I teach you how to learn Spanish from popular media like TV shows, movies, music, books, etc. that you can all find online for free. It was the #1 new release in the Spanish Language Instruction section on Amazon for nearly a month after it came out and currently has 17 reviews there with a 4.9/5 stars average. It’s available for $7.99-$9.99 for the e-book version depending on who you buy it from (Kindle version on Amazon is now $7.99) and $16.99 for the paperback (occasionally a bit cheaper, again, depending on who you buy it from).

It’s currently available in both e-book and paperback from:

Cheers,
Andrew

The post Learn Colombian Spanish #1: Pronunciation of “y” and “ll” appeared first on Learn Spanish with Andrew.