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Let’s learn a few new abstract nouns in Spanish, including the words for “control”, “deal”, “treatment”, and “fact”. We’ll get lots of spoken practice with these new words and some related idioms.
Hagamos un trato.
Intro: Join us on a rigorous, step-by-step journey to fluency. I’m Timothy and this is LearnCraft Spanish.
Let’s keep practicing the verbs Parecer, Llamar, and Salir, as well as our numbers from yesterday. While we do, we’ll also learn a few new common nouns.
Our first noun for today is control. This is a masculine noun and it has the same spelling as the English word “control”, and essentially the same meaning. So for example:
It seems I don’t have control of these things.
Parece que no tengo control de estas cosas.
Our next word is trato, which has two meanings. Sometimes it means “treatment”. For example:
They gave me bad treatment at that hotel.
Me dieron mal trato en ese hotel.
Note that this doesn’t refer to a “treatment” as in a medical treatment; there’s a different word for that. When trato means “treatment”, it only refers to how someone is treated.
But more often, the word trato means “deal”. This is often used along with the verb Hacer, as in “make a deal”. For example:
They’re making a deal without us knowing.
Están haciendo un trato sin que lo sepamos.
Let’s practice trato and control.
You seem to have control over this.
Pareces tener control sobre esto.
Let’s make a deal, I want us to go out tonight.
Hagamos un trato, quiero que salgamos esta noche.
This is not the best treatment I’ve had.
Este no es el mejor trato que he tenido.
I don’t have any control over the deal.
No tengo ningún control sobre el trato.
She wants me to go out, so we made a deal.
Quiere que yo salga, así que hicimos un trato.
My name isn’t that, so you don’t have to give me that treatment.
No me llamo así, así que no me tienes que dar ese trato.
Our next word is one you sort of already know, just not as a noun. Check out this sentence:
That place has a bad wait time.
Ese lugar tiene un mal tiempo de espera.
So here the word espera is being used as a noun to mean “wait”. This sentence uses the term tiempo de espera to mean “wait time”. But the feminine noun la espera means “the wait”. As is often the case in Spanish, this is a noun that comes straight from one of the common conjugations of a related verb.
Here’s another example:
You didn’t mind the wait?
¿No te importó la espera?
There’s also a common idiom associated with this. To refer to someone who is “in waiting”, or waiting for something, you might say that they’re a la espera, literally “to the wait”. For example:
We spent three hours in waiting.
Pasamos tres horas a la espera.
Let’s practice espera and a la espera, along with trato and control. In this first example, you’ll see “under control” translated as bajo control.
It has seemed to me that the wait was under control.
Me ha parecido que la espera estaba bajo control.
We were in waiting and later we went out.
Estábamos a la espera y luego salimos.
We had a deal, so we are going out partying.
Teníamos un trato, así que vamos a salir de fiesta.
The wait is the worst part, so we’re going out.
La espera es la peor parte, así que estamos saliendo.
This is the worst treatment I’ve had in waiting.
Este es el peor trato que he tenido a la espera.
The wait is not that bad.
La espera no es tan mala.
Next we come to the word hecho. Obviously we already know hecho as the participle of Hacer, as in “I have done it” or lo he hecho. But hecho is also a masculine noun that has two distinct meanings. It can mean “act”, as in an “action” or an “incident” or an “event”. For example:
Was it actions or just words?
¿Fueron hechos o solo palabras?
The events after the party were better than the party.
Los hechos después de la fiesta fueron mejor que la fiesta.
Those were exactly the events.
Esos fueron exactamente los hechos.
But more often, hecho means “fact”. For example:
The fact is that she doesn’t have control here.
El hecho es que ella no tiene control aquí.
Let’s practice both meanings.
The fact is that three minus two equals one.
El hecho es que tres menos dos es igual a uno.
It’s a fact that he doesn’t want her to go out.
Es un hecho que él no quiere que ella salga.
The fact is that I’ll call you.
El hecho es que te llamaré.
The events that day were scary.
Los hechos de ese día daban miedo.
The book is about events that happened in history.
El libro es sobre hechos que pasaron en la historia.
Let’s wrap up by learning one more idiom. The phrase de hecho usually means “in fact”. For example:
In fact, we made a deal yesterday.
De hecho, hicimos un trato ayer.
Sometimes this can mean “indeed”; for example:
He is, indeed, one of her best friends.
Él es, de hecho, uno de sus mejores amigos.
But remember that we already learned that sí, the word for “yes”, can also mean “indeed”. For example:
She did indeed do that.
Ella sí hizo eso.
It’s actually usually not too hard to choose between sí and de hecho; you’ll specifically use de hecho when it’s clearly parenthetical; you’re sort of stepping out of the sentence for a moment and using “indeed” in a way that’s very similar to how you’d use “in fact”. Here’s another example of that:
They(f) are, indeed, in a good place.
Ellas están, de hecho, en un buen lugar.
On the other hand, you’ll use sí specifically when you’re trying to emphasize that something IS true, rather than false. In those cases, it will occur within the flow of the sentence. For example:
But he indeed DOES want to live here!
¡Pero sí quiere vivir aquí!
And really, in these cases, we rarely use “indeed” in English; we usually instead just provide extra emphasis.
Let’s get some more practice with hecho, including some uses of de hecho to mean “indeed” and “in fact”.
They have, indeed, three of those.
Ellos tienen, de hecho, tres de esos.
The fact is that she called me.
El hecho es que ella me llamó.
In fact, it’s already 9 o’clock.
De hecho, ya son las 9 en punto.
They are calling me because of the occurrence.
Me llaman por el hecho.
I think, indeed, they are too young for this.
Creo, de hecho, que son muy jóvenes para esto.
I’m sad; in fact, I don’t want to go to the party.
Estoy triste, de hecho, no quiero ir a la fiesta.
For more practice with any of this, feel free to dig deeper at LCSPodcast.com/134. Or if you’re ready, let’s go on to today’s final quiz.
We had a deal; in fact, I’m in waiting.
Teníamos un trato, de hecho, estoy a la espera.
She wants us to go out before eight.
Quiere que salgamos antes de las ocho.
Go out! It’s a fact that the wait is bad.
¡Sal! Es un hecho que la espera es mala.
If you call me before nine, we can go out at ten.
Si me llamas antes de las nueve, podemos salir a las diez.
I think, indeed, that she won’t go out with him.
Creo, de hecho, que no saldrá con él.
Call her because she is, in fact, in waiting.
Llámala porque está, de hecho, a la espera.
Ten minus eight is, indeed, two.
Diez menos ocho son, de hecho, dos.
We haven’t gone out, but tell me if he calls.
No hemos salido, pero dime si llama.
I never go out because it might seem like a bad act.
Nunca salgo porque puede parecer un hecho malo.
This wait is bad because we had a deal and it was at ten.
Esta espera es mala porque teníamos un trato y era a las diez.
This occurrence is, indeed, very important.
Este hecho es, de hecho, muy importante.
(Plural) Go out! In fact, that is the deal.
¡Salgan! De hecho, ese es el trato.
He went out because he didn’t want to be in waiting.
Salió porque no quería estar a la espera.
I have this under control, eight plus one is nine.
Tengo esto bajo control, ocho más uno es nueve.
It seemed like a fact to him, but that wasn’t the deal.
Le parecía un hecho, pero ese no era el trato.
I always call her, but she never goes out.
Siempre la llamo, pero nunca sale.
I don’t want them to go out this weekend.
No quiero que salgan este fin de semana.
The fact is that nine plus one equals to ten.
El hecho es que nueve más uno es igual a diez.
We didn’t go out because we didn’t have control.
No salimos porque no tuvimos control.
You have to call me because you haven’t called me since that bad treatment.
Tienes que llamarme porque no me has llamado desde ese trato malo.
They seem to have control and they want to knock on the door.
Parecen tener control y quieren llamar a la puerta.
The fact is that the wait didn’t seem bad.
El hecho es que la espera no pareció mala.
(Formal) Go out! It seems like you want to do something.
¡Salga! Parece que quiere hacer algo.
For more practice with all of this, go to LCSPodcast.com/134, or tune in tomorrow for a big quiz to practice everything we’ve learned this week.
This show is brought to you by LearnCraftSpanish.com. The Spanish voice in this episode was our coach Ximena Lama-Rondón. Our music was performed by the Seattle Marimba Quartet, and I’m Timothy, encouraging you to do the hard work of learning Spanish. Acquiring a second language is one of the most fulfilling things you can do, so start your fluency journey today at LCSPodcast.com.
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