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Here’s a spoken quiz to practice Gustar in real-life sentences, along with the other affective verbs Importar and Preocupar.
Creo que te va a gustar.
Intro: Join us on a rigorous, step-by-step journey to fluency. I’m Timothy and this is LearnCraft Spanish.
Let’s practice the verbs Gustar, Importar, and Preocupar, as well as all the new adjectives and nouns we learned this week, using a big quiz.
First though, one new idiom: To talk about age in Spanish, you don’t say that someone “is seven years old”, you instead use the verb Tener and literally say that they “have seven years”, or tiene siete años. Here’s an example:
I used to do that when I was six years old.
Hacía eso cuando tenía seis años.
Try it yourself with this next one:
Is she four or five years old?
¿Tiene cuatro o cinco años?
There’s also a shorthand way to say this. In English, sometimes we leave off the “years old” if it’s clear that we’re talking about age. For example:
My son is six.
The equivalent in Spanish is to leave off the word años. So this would be:
Mi hijo tiene seis.
Let’s practice this. In each case, when you hear “years old”, you’ll include the word años, but sometimes we’ll leave that part out.
Your daughter is seven? I thought she was five.
¿Tu hija tiene siete? Creí que tenía cinco.
The kids are between three and five years old.
Los niños tienen entre tres y cinco años.
The morning kids are six and the afternoon ones are four.
Los chicos de la mañana tienen seis y los de la tarde tienen cuatro.
Her son is four years old and her daughter is six or seven.
Su hijo tiene cuatro años y su hija tiene seis o siete.
All right, let’s go on to our quiz. Try to predict the Spanish even if you don’t think that you’re going to be right; that’s super helpful for your learning because of the testing effect. And then when you do hear the Spanish the first time, make sure to repeat it out loud the second time for the best possible practice.
In this first example, you’ll see the phrase lo más importante, but then a phrase after it that’s NOT subjunctive. That’s because in this case we’re not expressing an intention; instead we’re just stating a fact and describing it as important. Try to predict the Spanish.
The most important thing is that she likes you.
Lo más importante es que le gustas.
My father is worried about all those things.
A mi padre le preocupan todas esas cosas.
I don’t think it matters to you, but they didn’t like those things.
No creo que te importe, pero no les gustaban esas cosas.
You don’t have to like it, but she is a master at that.
No te tiene que gustar, pero ella es una maestra de eso.
Would you like to be her friend? She is seven years old like you.
¿Te gustaría ser su amiga? Tiene siete años como tú.
(formal) Don’t worry, I would like to do it on your behalf.
No se preocupe, me gustaría hacerlo por usted.
It matters to us to know if your parents liked us or not.
Nos importa saber si les gustamos a tus padres o no.
The professor is getting a bit old, she can’t do that anymore.
La profesora está un poco vieja, ya no puede hacer eso.
You’re still young, you like going to those places.
Todavía estás joven, te gusta ir a esos lugares.
Those doctors are great, we liked them a lot.
Esos doctores son geniales, nos gustaron mucho.
The young man doesn’t have to worry if he didn’t like that.
El hombre joven no tiene que preocuparse si no le gustó eso.
(plural) Don't worry! It’s important, but I will do it.
¡No se preocupen! Es importante, pero yo lo haré.
I worry because the president is crazy.
Me preocupo porque el presidente está loco.
Don’t worry, the boss (f) is already there with the agent (m).
No te preocupes, la jefa ya está ahí con el agente.
The things the police officer did don't matter to them.
No les importan las cosas que hizo el policía.
It was important to him to go with you, but I don’t know if he will like it.
Le importaba ir contigo, pero no sé si le gustará.
The police officer(f) is bad, I think I don’t matter to her.
La policía es mala, creo que no le importo.
The professor won’t care, he has already seen things like that.
Eso no le importará al profesor, ya ha visto cosas así.
She has liked it because she is seven years old.
Le ha gustado porque tiene siete años.
The agent is a bit old and doesn’t want to leave the teacher(f).
El agente es un poco viejo y no quiere dejar a la maestra.
The king didn’t like you and that worries the queen.
No le gustabas al rey y eso le preocupa a la reina.
She liked doing all that because she was five years old.
Le gustaba hacer todo eso porque tenía cinco años.
The most important (thing) for the teacher is that they be together.
Lo más importante para el maestro es que ellos estén juntos.
Do you know if she likes me?
¿Sabes si le gusto?
I’m still not a master, but I do it fine.
Todavía no soy un maestro, pero lo hago bien.
You don’t have to worry, the king would care about those things.
No tienes que preocuparte, al rey le importarían esas cosas.
I know he liked me, I don’t know what you’re worried about.
Sé que le gustaba, no sé por qué te preocupas.
The boss has worried because he cares about you.
El jefe se ha preocupado porque le importas.
That would matter to the queen because she doesn't like those things.
Eso le importaría a la reina porque no le gustan esas cosas.
I don’t know if that is going to matter to the president(f).
No sé si eso le va a importar a la presidenta.
He cares about us, but I think he would care more about me.
Le importamos, pero creo que yo le importaría más.
My brother would like those things.
A mi hermano le gustarían esas cosas.
I’m sure that the doctor(f) cared about you.
Estoy seguro de que a la doctora le importabas.
For more practice with any of this, feel free to dig deeper at LCSPodcast.com/130.
Next week we have a lot of exciting things to learn, including how to count to ten and add and subtract in Spanish.
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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