This lesson is the last lesson (for now) on the demonstratives. Those again are:
este / esta – this
estos / estas – these
ese / esa – that
esos / esas– those
aquel / aquella – that (far)
aquellos / aquellas – those (far)
Now, since these all deal with gender… which would you use when you didn’t know the object (much less the gender) of something that you’re talking about? For that reason we have neutral demonstratives which take the place of the general ‘this’ or ‘that’.
Let me know if you have any questions/comments/suggestions about this video lesson!
Also, this lesson mentions a Mexican television program. For more on Chavo del Ocho, you might check this out. To watch some clips, try this.
Vocabulario:
esto – this (thing?)
eso – that (thing?)
aquello – that [far] (thing?)
¿Qué es esto? – What is this?
¿Qué es eso? – What is that?
¿Qué es aquello? – What is that (far)?
una guitarra – a guitar
¡Eso es horrible! – That is horrible!
¡Esto es genial! – This is great!
¿Por qué estás haciendo esto? – Why are you doing this?
¡Eso es! – That’s it (that’s the one!)*
*This is different than saying “that’s it!” when upset. That would be ‘¡Eso es el colmo!’ = “That is the last straw!”
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Related video(s):
5 Responses
I tried your suggestion with Eso es eso es eso es….that that that….to one of my hispanic clients. She laughed so hard I thought she would fly out of my chair….
Thanks Sr. Jordan… I am having a great time with your videos
In my Espanol 3 class, I always get confused WHEN to use the neutral “esto, eso, and aquello’s” Like would you use it for Tiburon? or what if you have the word like Marker (which is feminine in spanish) but is not even a he/she because it is an object. So would you use it for like when the spanish word IS a masculine/feminine? or when you dont know if it is either… like Tiburon?
When you’re talking about something abstract (undefined), you’ll use “esto, eso, aquello”
If you don’t know what you’re talking about when you’re asking a question, you can use “esto, eso, aquello” because you can’t possibly know the gender.
If you want to use it for ‘tiburón’ it would be if you see one at the zoo or if you’re on a boat and see one and don’t know what to call it. You can say: “¡Mira esto!” (Look at this)… “¡Mira eso / aquello!” (Look at that).
Otherwise, we use those when talking about things that might be concepts or ideas.
For example, just by googling we can see phrases like:
“¿Alguien Me Explica Esto?” (Can someone explain this [concept]?)
“Esto no es una crisis, es un cambio histórico” (This [thing] is not a crisis. It’s a historical change!)
We most often use: esto, eso, and aquello for abstracts.
-Sr. J
Your videos are BRILLIANT!!!! Thank you SO much! We are living in Andalucia, Spain at the moment and studying Spanish as much as we can and your videos are such a blessing! I have eecommended them to our spanish teacher that she might find them helpful too!
The Spanish the locals speak is very lazy and they ALWAYS leave the ‘s’s’ off the ends of words!
Thank you Sr Jordan,
Linda Cox
Can you go more in depth with the family?