Hi! Welcome to WNS. My name is María.
Would you like to listen to the Spanish people use every day? The one you'd use to talk to a salesperson, a neighbor or a friend?
Today you'll watch an interaction between a sales woman and me. This interaction takes place at a stationery store.
A papelería is a place where you can get pens, pencils, notebooks and ion general anything you need for your office or school.
They could also sell things for parties like balloons, cards or candles.
Now let's get started with the activity. First: Listen to the interaction,
Second: Listen to the interaction and read the trasnscript.
Third: Answer the questions. At the end of the activity I'll explain to you some interesting things.
Listening to real material like this is a great tool to improve your listening skills, your vocabulary and your Spanish.
If you like this activity, check out my courses for different levels of Spanish: From beginner to advanced.
I use real material and I give you detailed explanations about vocabulary, expressions, and pronunciation.
You can visit this website or click on the link in the description below.
Now, let's get started. Attention. Listen to the interaction.
Listen and read the transcript
Now, answer the questions
This is only a 23-seconds interaction and you can tell that only in 23 seconds there's a lot of interesting information
I'll explain some things that can be interesting to you.
First: A la orden. It's a common greeting in the context of shopping or transactions at a store.
Like at the bakery, a fruit store, a stationery, and so on...
They're basically asking you what do you want or need.
In the video I use the formal "usted" because I don't know the other person and I'm not sure if it's ok with her that I use "tú".
However, the other person uses the informal "tú" when she talks to me. Why? There might be a lot of reason but it's important you know that there's not a strict rule
that says you HAVE TO use USTED or TÚ. The use of "tú" also shows kindness and approachability, and a lot of people prefer to use it. For instance,
in these videos I use "tú" when I talk to you but I don't know who you are! I can't even see you! I just choose to use it because I want to
show approachability between me and the person who is listening.
If you're not sure about using tú or usted, start by using "usted" and pay attention to how the other person talks to you, then, decide if you switch to "tú".
In this interaction I use the masculine ending of the word to talk about the product I want to buy.
But the lady uses the feminine ending of the words... why?
Because I'm thinking about el cuaderno and she's thinking about la libreta.
Actually, that's the name for the object I wanted: una libreta. A feminine noun.
We cans ay then that I made a mistake. Because technically, this is a libreta, not a cuderno.
But in the end, that didn't matter. The conversation flowed and we both knew what we were talking about.
Then, if a native Spanish speaker can make a mistake like that, you can too!!!!
As long as the message is clear and both people understand the main point of the conversation, details don't matter much in real life.
Just try to correct it for next time.
Vecina means neighbor, but in Colombia you don't necessarily have to live next to the other person to be a vecino. It's just a friendly way to call a stranger.
Always at your service. It just means that if you need anything else in the future, I can help you. (mainly used by salespeople).
In only 23 seconds we learned so many things!
Next time you have a short interaction with another person, take your time alter to think about the sentences or expressions that were used.
That's all for this video, if you like it help us out by giving it a "like" and if you like my T-shirt you can find this one and more designs on our website.
Thanks for watching and remember: if you're going to learn a language, Why Not Spanish? Bye!